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The Darkness of a Foggy Morning

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A rare morning of darkness.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning, which isn’t all that unusual. What is unusual was how dark it was.

Yes, it’s true: the sun won’t rise this morning until 6:59 AM. Logic seems to dictate that it should be dark at 4:30. Yet is it seldom dark in my home.

While I live 2 miles down an unpaved (and unlighted) road that’s about 8 miles to the nearest town of any size — the City of Wenatchee, WA — and I’m surrounded by open land, orchards, and towering cliffs, the sad truth is that there’s enough light from Wenatchee and a handful of homes, orchards, and businesses within sight of my property to prevent it from ever getting really dark at my home. It’s not bright like Los Angeles or New York or even Phoenix, but it’s bright enough that my home, which has lots of curtain-free windows — who needs curtains when there’s no one around to look in? — has no need for night lights and nighttime sky viewing was disappointing enough for me to sell my telescope.

Light pollution is what I’d call it.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t mind all those lights. From my home, which is perched high above the city, all those lights can be quite beautiful at night. As I likely recounted elsewhere on my blog, they remind me of the view from the “rich people’s hill” my dad would occasionally take us for a drive up at night. My view is better than that was, of course, stretching 50 miles or more up to the North Cascades during the day. At night, I see most of Wenatchee and East Wenatchee, including the lights at the airport, which should be blinking right now (at 5:45 AM) in preparation for the airliner’s first departure of the day.

But I can’t see any of that right now. The lights are gone, blanketed by a thick fog that might, at this point, even surround me. I have no way of knowing because it is so dark.

It wasn’t that dark when I woke briefly at 1:45 AM. I knew immediately that it was foggy out, but the nearly full moon kept the sky bright. I went to my bedroom window for a look outside and saw the hillside behind my house and the top of the fog bank stretching as far as I could see.

When I rolled out of bed sometime after 5, I challenged myself to find my way to the kitchen without turning on a light. That’s something that I do every day, but it was a challenge this morning. What finally drew me in, like a moth to a porch light, was the light cast by numerous devices in my kitchen, great room, and loft: the clock on my microwave and stove and kitchen stereo. The blue status light on my Wink hub. The green status light on an Airport Express I use for music sharing. The blinking blue lights on my Internet router. A steady glowing red light on the power strip behind the television. Those lights were like beacons that brought out the dim details of an all-too-familiar space. I stood in the entrance to my kitchen area for a moment, taking inventory of all those tiny lights, and then flicked the light switch to officially start my day.

Now I’m sitting at the breakfast bar in my kitchen, typing away on my laptop with a hot cup of coffee beside me. Other than the tiny light I’ve already listed, four blown glass track light fixtures with halogen bulbs are illuminating the room. Out the window beside me that normally shows so many amazing views from my aerie is nothing but blackness.

Soon, it will get light enough for me see whether I’m in or over the fog bank. Eventually, the sunlight will poke its fingers through whatever clouds are above me to brighten the day. I’ll likely take some pictures and share them on Twitter, as I so often do.

But for now, I think I’ll turn off the lights, find a comfortable seat by the window, and sip my coffee in the darkness, enjoying this rare event while it lasts.

The Quiet Place

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Nothing is really as quiet as it seems.

“You live in a quiet place.”

Rooster
Future dinner guest of honor.

That’s the first thing the hispanic man said when he got out of his small four-door sedan in my driveway. He took a step back and opened the back door where his young son was sitting in a booster seat. He’d come to get the pair of two month old roosters I’d advertised on Craig’s List for free just the day before.

I was surprised by his observation. Most people commented on the view, which can be breathtaking if you’ve never seen it from my property’s perspective. I thought about his words and said, “Sometimes.”

We worked as a team to catch the two roosters, which were both white with gray patches on their backs. They’d been hatched by my broody hen who preferred sitting on eggs to laying them. Two months after playing mom to these boys and their four broodmates, she was sitting on eggs again and already had two chicks.

He put the two roosters in a small pet carrier just large enough for a 20-pound dog.

“There’s another one in there, but I’m not sure which one it is,” I told him.

“It’s the brown one,” he said. We walked back to the fenced in area and he pointed it out. I thought he might be right. I went in and caught it easily. He put it in the carrier with the other two.

“Are you going to eat them?” I asked.

“Yes. But I might wait a few weeks for the brown one. He’s small.” He showed the carrier’s cage door to his son, who had remained patiently in the car. “Pollo,” he said.

Then he put them in the trunk, shut the lid, and drove off.

I was glad he’d be eating them. Better that then setting them to fight.

– o –

Much later, after spending time at the local airport watching the rapelling crew practice and having lunch with a friend and looking at a trailer for sale and checking on an AirBnB house I manage I got back home. I listened to the radio as I did chores.

His observation came back to me a while later when I was out on the deck, fetching a bedspread I’d hung out over the rail out there.

Even though the radio was off — I’d grown tired of listening to voices talk about the same old thing — it wasn’t that quiet. Out in the distance, I could hear a dirt bike revving its engine as it sped around on a dirt track in someone’s back yard. I could hear a dog barking. I could hear a motor — maybe a lawn mower? — down in the valley below me. If I listened hard enough, I could hear the cars on the road across the river.

I put the bedspread in the dryer and turned it on, then went back outside to see what else I could hear. The dryer through the vent. Rover the cat’s nails as they dug into the 8-inch square posts holding up my deck roof while he climbs the twelve feet to my perch. A single cricket starting its night song early.

You live in a quiet place.

I wondered where he lived and how much louder it was. Did he live near an orchard where there was always the sound of sprayers or mowers or work crews pruning or picking or working on irrigation? Did he live near a major road where there was always the sound of traffic rushing by? Did he live in a densely packed neighborhood where you could always hear some man shouting, some woman yelling, some kid screaming, some dog barking, some car with a bad muffler growling?

I remembered what it was like in Manhattan, on the overnight stays on 57th Street near First Avenue where my college boyfriend’s parents lived. Fourteen floors up in a building with a doorman and a guy would would fetch your car from the garage when you called on the house phone. Out on the tiny balcony or inside with the windows open even a crack, the sound of the city was a constant quiet roar, punctuated with car horns and sirens. It was never quiet there, just as it was never dark.

Even here there were times when it wasn’t quiet at all. In the late winter and early spring, when the temperature dipped down to the low 30s, the wind machines — two bladed fans on tall poles — would come to life, spinning their blades on rotating heads that sounded just like helicopters coming and going over the orchards around them. Sometimes they’d start as early as 11 PM and run all night long, finally shutting down an hour or so after the sun finally began warming the air around them. But how often did that happen? Four or five times in a whole year?

The orchard sprayers were a different story. They ran almost daily, usually in the morning, sometimes starting before dawn. I’d wake at 4 and go out onto my deck and look out to see their headlights among the trees. Pesticides, herbicides, anti-fungal chemicals, and who knew what else? During the day I’d see the spray like a cloud around the sprayer as it moved through the orchard. The chemicals didn’t bother me; they never traveled far. But it was the sound — a steady whine — that you couldn’t avoid. Even that was seasonal, though, and when the trees were picked, the sprayers were mostly silent.

You live in a quiet place.

Back in the chicken yard, my remaining rooster, father of the three that had left in the car trunk, crowed. Another cricket took up the evening song. A larger, closer dog barked. My roof clicked as it always does when the sun sets and the metal panels start to contract in the cooling air. A train rumbled by two miles away and then tooted its horn at a distant crossing as I knew it would.

The dryer finished its short fluff cycle and the vent sound faded. Inside my laundry room, The Samsung dryer would play Bach in simple tones before shutting off.

Was this quiet? I guess that depended on what you knew. It was quieter than Manhattan, but it wasn’t nearly as quiet as the 40 acres I used to own with my wasband at the top of a mesa 30 miles south of the Grand Canyon. Five miles from pavement, it was so quiet that you could hear the sound of a raven’s wings flapping as it flew by. It was so quiet that one morning, when I tried to turn the radio down because it seemed so loud, I discovered that the volume level was already set to 1. That was a quiet place.

I turned and went inside to finish making the bed, leaving the door to the deck open so the sounds of this quiet place could come inside.

Lights at Night

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Beautiful, but at a cost.

As the days are getting shorter, I’m finally rising and going to bed when it’s dark out again. This morning, I took a few moments to contemplate the predawn lights of Wenatchee from my home. And it really is beautiful.

Lights at Night
The view from my deck looking out towards Wenatchee at 4:51 AM this morning.

When I was a kid, my family would occasionally take a drive up to the east side of the town we lived in, Cresskill, NJ. Back in the 1960s and into the 1970s and beyond, developers had begun building luxury homes on a hillside that climbed away from the town toward the Palisades. We used to call it “the rich people’s hill” because the homes were huge and it was obvious that only rich people lived there. I remember one of those drives being in the evening, after the sun had set and the lights of Cresskill had come on. I remember seeing all those lights, like diamonds in the darkness.

That’s what my nighttime view here reminds me of sometimes.

I cannot begin to describe how wonderful it is to live in a place so removed from, yet within reach of, a small city like Wenatchee. I have all the conveniences that the little city offers — shopping, dining, theaters, nightlife, services, and even an airport with airline service to a real city (Seattle) and beyond. Yet I’m not down in it, crawling around in — or listening to — traffic. Even as I sit here now, typing out my thoughts as the sky brightens out my windows, the only sound is my wine fridge humming and my rooster crowing. Even when they’re spraying down in the orchards far below me, the sound seems more earthy, more natural, than the sounds of the city.

But the lights. Sigh.

I’ve begun to notice bright ones getting closer. When I returned from my winter travels in spring 2018, I noticed four new bright spotlights over some sort of maintenance yard down by the river. You can see them on the right side of this photo: three in one color and one in another. And last spring I noticed a new bright light across the river, likely shining down into someone’s yard. Why?

Here at my home, I have subdued lighting at night. There are solar accent lights along my driveway and the path to my tent and the posts tops on the uncovered side of my deck. There are motion-sensor lights that go on when someone — or something — walks near them. None of these lights shine up. And that’s it. I see no reason to pollute the sky with light at night.

And that’s what it is: light pollution. The only complaint I have about my home is the fact that it never gets truly dark here. (Well, it actually does, but only at night when it’s foggy.) And because I don’t have (or need) curtains on my windows, it never gets dark inside my home.

It was with a bit of sadness that I sold my old telescope last year. It was parked near the door to the deck for years and only used, with disappointing results, once or twice. Although I’m likely to pick up a more compact one with tracking that I can take on my winter travels — plenty of dark sky out in the desert! — I just have no use for one here.

It’s blue hour right now, light enough to see the empty sage land between my home and the orchards and lights beyond it. The city lights are starting to fade. It’ll be a hot sunny day today.

But at night, I’ll see those lights again, enjoying the view while lamenting my loss of dark night sky.

Christmas at My House

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A lot more enjoyable these days.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmas lately.

So what? you’re probably saying. Everyone is thinking about Christmas these days.

I’m sure that’s true. But I haven’t been thinking about it the way everyone else has. I haven’t been thinking about buying lots of gifts and getting the best deals on them. I haven’t been thinking about Christmas lights or trees or decorations. I haven’t been thinking about making holiday dinner or travel plans. I haven’t been thinking about recipes or picky eaters or squeezing people around a table that might be too small. I haven’t been thinking about traffic or bridge tolls or parking. I haven’t been thinking about the inevitable battle of ideas — red vs. blue — that’s certain to be a major part of any family gathering in the U.S.

In other words, I’m not thinking about Christmas the way most people are.

Instead, I’m reflecting on what Christmas used to be at my home and how it’s different now. Bear with me while I tell you a little about it.

Childhood Christmas

Christmas at my house when I was a kid was probably a lot like every other middle class family’s. It included a Christmas tree — normally live cut — with lots of decorations, some of which had been handed down as family heirlooms. Some years, there was an HO train around the base of the tree and antique figures, likely made from lead, skating on a mirror ice rink.

We usually spent Christmas Eve at our house, often with two or four grandparents. My mother made dinner, which was normally based around seafood. She seemed to think that Catholic tradition meant no meat on Christmas Eve and if I had an Internet connection right now, I’d look it up to see if she was right. It doesn’t really matter, though.

We usually opened gifts at midnight on Christmas Eve, sometimes after attending midnight mass. The year I realized Santa wasn’t real is the year my 6’4″ father showed up at our house in a Santa suit.

Gifts were the usual collection of toys and sweaters.

On Christmas Day, we went to my mother’s brother’s house about 10 miles away. I had two cousins — I suppose I still do, although I haven’t seen or heard from either one of them in over 15 years — who were just younger than me and my sister. My sister and I always got the same gift from my aunt and uncle: a pair of identical dolls, a pair of identical sweaters, a pair of identical scarves, etc. (Only 16 months apart, we looked so similar that people thought we were twins and my aunt trying to dress us the same every Christmas didn’t make things any better.) My aunt made a huge Italian dinner that started with an antipasto and progressed through the remaining courses: pasta, meat (ham or turkey) with sides, dessert with coffee or espresso, and nuts. It took hours to eat. The kids ate at the kitchen table while the grownups squeezed around the long dining room table. When my godfather was there, things often got rowdy. It was always loud.

Christmas with a New Family

After my parents split and my mother remarried, Christmas changed. There were far more gifts with much bigger price tags. I remember getting a rabbit fur coat that first Christmas — it was in the mid 1970s and I was about 15 — and feeling like I was a rich kid.

It was probably around this time that we started the tradition of distributing the gifts and then each person opening one up while we went around the room until all the presents had been opened. It took over an hour to get through them all — mostly because we all had some kind of commentary about every single gift — but I enjoyed every minute. Not only did you get to see what each person got as a gift, but you got to see their reaction to it. As you might imagine, this ranged from are you kidding another sweater? to omigod this is exactly what I wanted!

I don’t remember the arrangements for that first Christmas, but I’m pretty sure my steps — two stepsisters and a stepbrother just a little older than us — came over. They certainly did when we moved to Long Island in 1977. It was probably about a 90-mile drive for them, which I know was rough because around then is when we started making the long drive from Long Island to New Jersey on Christmas Day. That was a bitch because there was always traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway, which we couldn’t avoid.

Every year was a little different after that, although I’m pretty sure Christmas Eve was always at our house with that seafood dinner. My brother made lobster bisque one year when he was in culinary school and my sister and I rescued large hunks of lobster from the trash; he claimed he only cooked them for their flavor and didn’t need them in the soup. (WTF?)

Christmas as Half of a Couple

When I lived in Queens and later New Jersey with my future wasband, Christmas was a bit of an ordeal, mostly because of travel. We’d go to my parents house on Christmas Eve and his parents house on Christmas Day. Traffic was a nightmare, especially on Christmas Day when we lived in New Jersey. We were dealing with the Cross Bronx Expressway again, but in the opposite direction. Amazingly it was bumper-to-bumper in both directions.

At my parents’ house, the Christmas Eve traditions went on: tree, holiday decorations, seafood dinner, presents opening as close to midnight as possible. One or more of the steps usually showed up with a boyfriend or spouse. We often killed time by playing poker — for money — at a nice game table my parents had in the corner of the living room. It was usually pleasant.

At my future wasband’s parents’ house, things were different. It was loud, presents were opened in a mad rush that took 10 minutes and left you wondering what the person who got your gift thought about it, and there was a constant undertone of bickering. His mother was (understandably) stressed and his father teased her mercilessly so voices got raised. His sister’s high-pitched voice always seemed to be heard above the general din. It was never a pleasant experience for me but I did it because, well, that’s what you do when you’re part of a couple.

Christmas in Arizona

Things improved immensely when we moved to Arizona, leaving both of our families behind. Although we did go back a few times for the holidays — what were we thinking? — we eventually stopped the insanity and spent quiet Christmases at home or at some vacation property we owned near the Grand Canyon. One year we grabbed our cameras, hopped in my Jeep, and spent Christmas Day exploring the desert. (It was a foreshadowing of my future Christmases.)

The one year his family flew out to stay with us for Christmas was a borderline disaster, starting with their flight from New York. In my wasband’s never-ending attempts to save a buck, he’d managed to save $50 on airfare by putting his sister and mother on a flight on ATA with a stop at Chicago’s Midway Airport. What could go wrong with a budget airline winter flight stopping over in a northern city? The plane had mechanical issues and because they didn’t have a spare plane, his mother and sister were stuck at Midway for a while. I don’t remember the details — hell, his brother and niece may have been with them — but it cast a pall over their entire trip. His sister, of course, made things worse by refusing to sleep on the futon in my office, forcing my wasband to put her up in a hotel. Always interested in saving a buck, he put her in a place in town that wasn’t exactly the Hilton with an indoor pool that she apparently expected. Then she refused to take his car to make the trip back and forth, forcing him to become her taxi service when she wanted to come and go. Then, if that wasn’t enough, she decided to go through my dresser drawers and came down wearing my favorite t-shirt. I was so surprised that I actually said something about it which, of course, offended her to the point where she pretty much stopped talking to me for the rest of the stay. (Lucky me.)

As you can imagine, they never came back as a group again.

(A side story here. My family’s one-time visit as a group to our house in Arizona had its hiccups, too. It was Thanksgiving and I think it might have been the same year. Sitting around the kitchen table talking or playing cards or something, my sister or brother said something to me and I replied in my best Sarah Palin voice, “You betcha!” My mother went freaking ballistic. It was the year that McCain and Palin had lost to Obama and she was still sore about it. That was the beginning of a huge political riff caused primarily by her addiction to Fox News. She once told my sister that 9/11 happened because my sister voted for Gore. Where do people get crazy ideas like that?)

Anyway, Christmas on our own was a lot more relaxed and pleasant than it had been back east. And I liked it!

Christmas on My Own

The year my crazy divorce started, I spent Christmas at my mother’s house. She’d moved with my step dad to Florida. I went down far enough in advance to avoid travel woes and I came home to Arizona — I was still living in my “marital home” — on Christmas Day. Flying on the airlines on Christmas Day is quite a pleasure; try it sometime.

After that, when I moved to Washington and built my new home, I did my own thing for Christmas. I usually went cross country skiing up the Methow Valley, which has some of the best groomed trails in the country. (Supposedly, Olympic athletes train there.) Sometimes I’d already gone south for the winter and did something alone or with friends — two years ago I saw a movie, last year I went boating. Very relaxing.

Over time, the actual date of Christmas started to shift. My sister, brother, and I began shopping using Amazon wish lists. Throughout the year, we’d add things we wanted to a list and then, right around Thanksgiving, tune up that list so it only included the items we really wanted. Then, after Thanksgiving, we’d use the lists to shop for each other. This is amazingly convenient for three reasons:

  • You are guaranteed to get the recipient exactly what he/she wants. Hell, they gave you a link to it!
  • You can get all your shopping done without leaving the house. You can even do it in the middle of the night if you have weird sleep patterns like I do.
  • You don’t have to worry about wrapping and boxing and shipping the item to the recipient. Amazon does it for you. This is a huge cost-saver with free shipping when recipients live in New Jersey, Florida, and Washington State.

In the beginning, we’d wait until Christmas to open the gifts. At least my sister and I would. My brother opened them as they arrived. So we all started opening them as soon as they arrived. For a while, it’s Christmas every few days. And then the last present arrives and all the thank you phone calls and texts stop coming and going. And that’s when Christmas is over.

As least for me.

This year, Christmas ended for me on around December 10. I was done Christmas shopping and had gotten all of my gifts. I had no holiday parties to attend — although I did turn down two invitations — and no travel plans other than my usual plan to go south. I had no reason to go to a mall or any other shopping center where I might be subject to large doses of holiday music.

(Another side note here. I have to say that I’m bummed out about the newly found hate for the song Baby It’s Cold Outside, which I’ve always considered a playful seasonal duet. Yes, I realize that no means no, but seriously? Do you really think it’s a product of rape culture? Get a grip. What’s next? Jingle Bells? Will PETA take issue with that poor horse pulling a sleigh in the cold? [Insert eyeroll emoji here.])

How I’ll Spend This Christmas

The calendar tells me that it’s Christmas Eve morning, but I just see it as a Monday on vacation. I’m camped out in the desert with a friend. Soon she and her significant other will leave on a long drive to his parents house in California. They’ll participate in the same kind of Christmas rituals other people — including me in the past — participate in. Meanwhile, I’ll probably head into town to top off a propane tank and fetch some water and maybe buy some beads for a project I’m working on. Later, I’ll grill up a nice piece of salmon for dinner — ironically having fish on Christmas Eve.

Weather permitting, I’ll spend Tuesday — which you might think of as Christmas — in the shop I set up outside my camper, practicing my soldering skills (which need a lot of practice). If it’s really nice, I’ll take my new kayak — a Christmas present to myself — out for a paddle on the backwater channel I can see from my camper window. Maybe I’ll grill up a steak for dinner, but it’s more likely that I’ll make a nice omelet using eggs I brought south from my chickens at home.

Arizona Sunrise
I’m at my Christmas destination. Here’s what Friday’s sunrise looked like.

If you’re reading this and are, for some reason, pitying me because I’ll spend Christmas alone, save your pity for someone else. I’m pitying the people who have to climb into cars and brave traffic to gather at a relative’s home for noise, bickering, disappointing gifts, and the inevitable political argument. I’ve been there and I’ve done that and I’m so very, very glad I’ll likely never have to do it again.

You Don’t Need Holidays

My thoughts about holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter are simple: People put too much emphasis on them and not enough on the 362 other days of the year.

You want to spend some quality time with a relative or friend? Go visit them in June or February or October. A day that isn’t a holiday, a day that doesn’t come with holiday baggage. Or better yet, meet them in a place you’d both like to visit — a park or a museum or a restaurant — and spent your quality time there, enjoying a shared experience that doesn’t require one of you to clean house, prepare a meal, or fret about having company.

And if you happen to think about me and this blog post while you’re enduring your own Christmas trials this year, try hard not to be too jealous.

Solar “Sleep In” Time at the Aerie

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When my sunrise happens later than the people in the valley.

I’ve been home from my vacation for two days now — just in time to notice the start of what I think of as the sun’s “sleep in” period. Let me explain.

My home sits on a shelf overlooking the Wenatchee Valley. The valley is to the north. To the south is a 1000+ foot basalt cliff carved out by ice age floods. My home, in fact, sits on silt and rock deposits left behind from those floods. (The geology is fascinating here.)

As anyone who paid attention to basic astronomy in science class knows, the sun rises and sets at a slightly different part of the horizon every day. From the winter solstice in mid December to the summer solstice in mid June, the sun rises and sets a little farther north every day. From the summer solstice to the winter solstice it sets a little farther south every day. The equinoxes — in March and September — are when the sun rises and sets due east and west respectively. Ancient people knew all this stuff — probably better than today’s Americans — and created structures to track it, like Stonehenge and various Mayan observatories such as El Caracol in Chichen Itza.

Throughout August, the sun has been rising a bit more to the south (right) on my horizon every day. A slope up to the cliffs lies due east of my home. On a specific day in August, the sun starts rising behind that slope. Because it has to clear the slope (and eventually the cliffs) before I can see it, sunrise to me happens later than people who aren’t quite as close to the slope or the cliff.

For lack of a better way to describe this, I say that the sun is “sleeping in” or just rising later than it should be.

Since I moved here full time back in 2013, I’ve been trying to make observations about the sun’s movement as it relates to my home. Every once in a while, I witness a key event. For example, around the first of December is when the sun rises so far south that it never quite clears the cliffs to the south of my home. Starting on that date and ending about six weeks later is what I’ve come to call the “shadow time“; I get no sunrise at all and live in the shadow of the cliff. (If you think that’s bad, it’s a lot worse for my neighbors on the south side of the road — they don’t get any direct sun for months.) Since I spend much of my winter traveling, it doesn’t really affect me.

Yesterday, August 26, is when I noticed that the sun rose right where the flat horizon met the hills at the base of the cliff. I put it on my calendar as a recurring event called “Sunrise Corner” — when the sun rises in this “corner” of the horizon. This morning, I snapped a picture right before sunrise to illustrate it.

My Sunrise Corner
The sun now rises where the flat horizon meets the base of the cliffs behind my home. From now through December, the sun will have to clear the cliffs before it “rises” for me — hence, it’s “sleeping in.”

I should mention here that even though I’m not seeing the sun at the reported moment of sunrise, people down in the valley might be. I’ll look down and see the valley bathed in sunlight, with deep shadows cast by the cliffs and other hillsides delay sunrise for others. Even during my six weeks of “shadow time,” the valley gets sunshine and it’s bright outside. It’s all relative.

There is a benefit to the delayed sunrise and the steady movement of the sun to the south. My desk currently sits at an east-northeast-facing window. When the sun rises farther to the north, on the flat horizon, it shines right into the side of my face when I’m trying to work. I’m going to permanently solve that problem by moving my desk up to my loft. (I’ll have a lot fewer distractions up there, too.) But until then, I have to rely on sun shades if I can’t wait until later in the day to get desk work done.

I think that’s one of the things I like most about where I live now: nature is more a part of my life. I can see it and notice it. It’s impossible not to. And then I can reflect on how it affects me and the things I do.

For example, the front of my house faces mostly east. That means you’ll never see me mow my lawn during the hot summer months between sunrise and about 4 PM when my lawn is in the shade of my home. Likewise, you won’t find me lounging on the sofa in my bedroom beside that west-facing window on a summer afternoon — although it’s quite pleasant on a winter afternoon.

As the sun rises later and later in the morning — especially here at the Aerie — I’ll enjoy the extra cool morning time to get things done on the east side of my home.

When will the sun be at the corner again? That’s actually pretty easy to calculate. Figure the number of days between yesterday and the winter solstice: about 117. Now add that to the winter solstice date and you get April 17, 2018. It should be within a day or two of that. I’ll see if I can remember to check in April.