Seeking Solstice

Summer is a lot like love: beautiful, vast and full of portent.

And on Thursday summer will officially be here with the arrival of the solstice. Astronomers can give you the technical explanation of what happens on the longest day of the year. But after that, words seem to fail when it comes to capturing summer. Seasons and emotions reveal the limitations of the written word like nothing else can.

How does one commit to paper the sky over California at sunset? A first kiss?

At best words capture moments and conjure memories. Each year, with the return of summer, life has a certain duality. It is the present, the now, but it is also what has been, the summers of our youth, feelings thought forgotten.

And so we remember: sweet peaches and summer breezes, homemade ice cream and walking barefoot, backyard barbecues and roller-blading at sunset.

And now another summer is upon us, a time to make enough good memories to last until next summer, enough to last a lifetime.

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The Summer Solstice

Summer begins Thursday at precisely 7:24 p.m. with the summer solstice. The day of the summer solstice is the longest day of the year. It marks the time when the sun reaches its most northerly point. At this point, the North Pole is most directly tilted toward the sun and the Northern Hemisphere receives the most sunlight.

Source: World Book Encyclopedia, Griffith Park Observatory