I was born in Maryland and spent my first thirty years living there, first in the Appalachian Mountains, then on the Eastern Shore, and later in suburban Washington. After a year in South Carolina, I moved to Georgia in 1977. I soon met another park ranger who worked in Florida. She was a wonderful woman who became my best friend. then my wife, and soon the mother of our three children. I spent over eleven years working in the historic city of Savannah, Georgia, and on the moss-draped sea islands nearby before moving to Atlanta.. In 2007, I retired from the National Park Service and a career dedicated to preserving and interpreting resources and themes in the cultural and natural history of the United States. It was a most rewarding experience. Today, I enjoy living in the rolling hills and woods of the Appalachian Piedmont east of Atlanta.
In a few hours winter arrives in Atlanta. That event as well as the drizzle and an afternoon temperature of 42 degrees is more than enough to awaken thoughts of sub-freezing temperatures, howling winds and depths of drifting snow measured in feet. Much of the nation won't have long to wait for that weather. By Christmas weekend an Arctic blast will drop temperatures to near freezing on the edge of tropical Florida. Atlanta is likely to experience its third coldest Christmas on record.
Personally I don't look forward to cold temperatures, ice, assorted freezing slop, and black snow lining city streets for the next two months. On the other hand, the thought of lengthening days that arrived with today's solstice brings a big smile to my face. This rebirth of the sun has brought happiness to humans for quite a long time.
The Newgrange Tumulus in County Meath, Ireland, is a nice illustration of this long-standing respect for the rebirth of light and warmth to a culture. The burial mound has a passage that aligns perfectly with the winter solstice sunrise. People have observed the illumination of the keystone at Newgrange long before Stonehenge and the Giza pyramids existed.
For the next six months the sun will climb a bit higher every day in the Northern Hemisphere. We won't notice heat from the "rebirth" of the sun until a month or so into this cycle. While the lengthening days can give us hope that the "dead season" will soon come to an end, we can still enjoy the experience of a world at quiet rest.
Sources
Photos and Illustrations:
Newgrange aerial photo, gaia.com Newgrange plan and section, public domain illustration, William Frederick Wakeman, Wakeman's Handbook of Irish Heritage (1903), archives.org
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