Winter Solstice

This has got to be one of my very favorite days of the year, the shortest day of the year and the beginning of the slow run back into the sun. Every day from here until the summer solstice gets progressively longer, while darkness creeps back. Explaining this to my youngest child, age 8, is a bit difficult, as if this marked the middle of winter instead of just the beginning. Yet here we are, a week before Christmas with 23 inches of snow on the ground (less, actually, as the piles have begun to sink into themselves with recent warmer weather and light rain) and all of winter technically ahead of us. I love this nadir, as there is only one way out - UP!

What I had planned on doing today was painting a line across our back brick path where the shadow of our roof falls on this day of lowest sun angle. Our old sidewalk, before we tore up the cement and replaced it with red pavers, was marked in this way at both the shortest and longest days of the year. Our roofline, which runs east-west, is perpendicular to the sun's rays and casts a shadow directly over our back yard that moves roughly 30 feet north every fall, until today when it sits for a moment and then starts to go back south again towards the house. I haven't yet caught that exact day and time to take down the measurements, so there are no new marks on our brick path to mark these auspicious events. Today, I was ready. I watched the fog stuff itself between the trees early this morning and knew it didn't bode well for my task at hand. I waited patiently and prayed for a break in the clouds, but at high noon the skies were still thick and gray - not a single shadow to be cast.
I could possibly make a small, temporary mark tomorrow at noon, if the skies cooperate, but I wanted it to be today. I guess since the actual equinox is just after midnight tonight I could use tomorrow just as well. We'll see, but if it remains cloudy I guess I'll just have to wait another year and keep watching.