Attention Kmart Shoppers! It’s the Winter Solstice
texas fly fishing brighter days ahead
For all those retailers open 24 hours, welcome yourselves to even longer days starting tomorrow. This is the shortest day of the year, and thank God it’s over. I love this day as much as I dislike the longest day of the year. Why? Because I know that the longest day is followed by ever shorter days … until now.
The solstice marks the shortest day of the year at nine hours and 32 minutes of daylight – fourteen hours and 28 minutes of darkness – for North America.
Did you know:”The Apollo 8 mission, the first manned mission to reach and orbit the Moon, was launched on the Winter Solstice in 1968, exactly 45 years ago today. The first humans to ever see the Earth from such a great distance, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders began their journey away from Earth on the Winter Solstice, the darkest evening of the year.”
I’m a tailing end baby boomer, but a solid Apollo kid. We sat outside, on the sidewalks of our neighborhood in lawn chairs, staring up at the moon that night, Apollo 11, the night man first walked on the moon. It was a perfectly clear night in South Texas, and everyone had their hobby telescopes and binoculars trained on the moon as if we could actually see that flag waving outside the lunar lander.
Well, we didn’t see that, but all these decades later I do see the nuances of days getting shorter and longer. For the record, I love longer days. Almost on queue, we have a chicken laying eggs, and perhaps the darkest days are behind all of us now.
Funny thing is, the coldest months in this parts of Texas are still ahead. These past few weeks have given the locals (I’m not one of those) pause; If it’s this cold now, then what does January, February and even March have in store?
Strictly by the length of days, we’re on the upswing now!
Category: Science and Environmental
