Running out of Time

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How can you let a solstice slip past without noticing it?  Admittedly, it’s sometimes easy to do in summer, but for the winter solstice it’s more serious.  Ironically for me, the issue is that I’m still a jogger.  When you start your work day early, and you try to jog before work, the shortness of the day works against you.  Even if you prefer the after-work jog, December and January give you that perpetual feeling that you’re running out of time.  Each year around about now I look at charts.  Some organizations helpfully publish sunrise and sunset charts free on the internet.  I trace them to see when there will be enough light to jog in the morning.  Because of the offset between latest sunrise and earliest sunset, the evenings have been getting microscopically longer for a couple weeks now.  Sunrises, however, are still coming later.  They’ll continue to do so until about mid-January.

For those of us who parse out our days into minutes, trying to feed the beast that requires our utter devotion, finding time to jog can be difficult.  It’s dark after work, and besides, I’m exhausted and hungry by then and need to start on supper.  Morning’s an easier thing to control.  With pagan fervor I await the lengthening days.  Particularly the early mornings, which I crave to be earlier again.  So we light a Yule log and pray for the best.  Not that it ever changes sunrise times.  Around here there’ve been a couple of epic December rainstorms and cloudy days push available light back even further.  With the sun technically risen, it can still be dark.  There’s a metaphor here, dear reader.

Winters are for reflection.  Unless we’re busy cramming each day full of seasonal festivities, we spend a lot of time indoors with our thoughts.  That’s one of the reasons I jog.  It clears my head.  It’s the reboot that comes after the reboot of a night’s rest.  I’ve generally been awake for hours before sunrise.  These little thoughts I share with you daily are courtesy of those quiet moments in the dark.  A winter is wasted if we don’t use it for reflection.  Employers should be more generous with their December holidays.  It’s in sync with nature, which is more in keeping with being human than “business,” or “busyness” is.  Today is the winter solstice.  Around sunset we will light some candles of hope.  And we know that even if we can’t really tell, tomorrow will have a bit more light than today.

Weathering the Winter

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Although it’s been cold out, in many ways this feels like the year without a winter.  Around here we’ve had no real measurable snowfall and temperatures have generally hovered around 40 F, mostly cloudy.  I get cold easily, however, so I need to know how to dress for jogging.  During a warm spell I looked at WeatherBug.  It’s my go-to app for such things.  It told me the current temperature was 49.  Since it’d been in the sixties the day before, that was believable.  Then I glanced at our outdoor thermometer.  It read 39.  A ten-degree difference is significant for jogging, so I called in a third party.  Weather.com said it was 40, much closer to my actual feeling of things—it was chilly inside that morning.  WeatherBug also said it was cloudy, but Weather.com disagreed.  A glance outside showed thin, hazy cloud cover.

Now, I know apps can’t cater to individual needs, but it does seem that WeatherBug was using projections rather than real-time information.  Either that, or somebody was standing too close to the thermometer at the local reporting station, and perhaps breathing on it.  I’m not one of those people who rely on my phone for everything.  I do use it for navigation and snapping quick pictures, but until today I also used it for checking the weather.  I’ve been surprised how often WeatherBug tells me it’s sunny out when I can see nothing but clouds.  Sometimes looking out the window is the best way to learn what your individual weather is like.  Weather is terribly local.

The capriciousness of weather is one of the main factors that led me to write Weathering the Psalms.  Another, of course, was the hope that an academic post might actually consider a guy like me.  The weather has always been a source of personal fascination.  The threat of severe weather, particularly in the Midwest, was a source of naked awe.  I remember standing outside in Illinois with the wide, expansive horizon all around, and staring straight up to a brewing storm cloud thousands of feet overhead.  I didn’t need an app to tell me to take shelter.  Or that time in Wisconsin when a weather system led to repeated, identical cycles of storms that lasted days, leading to localized flooding with rain following a clockwork regularity.  Even then I was a jogger, and for a jogger knowing the weather in advance is important.  These days all that majestic sky drama comes via a device that fits inside my pocket.  It seems we’ve lost something, even though we’re safer this way.  At least within ten degrees.

Winter Waiting

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The waiting, as Tom Petty knew, is the hardest part.  Along the slow turning of the wheel of the year it’s now light enough to go jogging before work.  That won’t last, however, because Daylight Saving Time is imminent and will set us back a month in the illumination department.  Also I haven’t been able to jog because the massive snowstorm we had a couple weeks back dumped over two feet of snow on the jogging trail and it hasn’t melted yet.  I miss it.  The jogging, I mean.  I’ve become one of those people who never the leave the house and I see how difficult it is just waiting.  Waiting for the snow to melt.  Waiting for the vaccine.  Waiting for the light.

I’m no psychologist, but I have to wonder if that isn’t one of the greatest stresses faced by the many stir-crazy people who’ve been shut-ins for pretty much a year now.  For us this snowstorm took away the little mobility we had.  Getting out daily for a constitutional put me in touch with nature, at least.  Now nature is under a thick, crusty white blanket, slumbering away.  But the birds have begun to return.  With their avian wisdom they’ve seen the end of winter.  Suddenly this past Wednesday they were here, bringing hope in their wings.  Birds have long been symbols of freedom—we’ve got a couple bald eagles in the neighborhood, reminding me of that.  A far more ancient association was that between the bird and the human soul.  The ability to soar.

We may still be mired in winter, but time is inexorable.  Relentless.  As the globe wobbles recklessly back toward the warmer seasons we need to take responsibility for our part in global warming.  Ironically these freak storms are the result of an overall warming trend.  The weakening of the jet stream that allows cold northern air to drop snow in Texas and storms to cover much of the rest of us all at the same time.  The pandemic has helped clear the air a bit.  At least we’ve rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, and we’ll try to begin undoing the damage to our planet that the last four years introduced.  It will take some time, of course.  By now we should be experts in biding our time.  The snow will melt.  The light will continue to grow.  I will get back out on that jogging path again.  But for now we wait.

Walnuts

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The walnuts are always the first to turn.  At least around here they are.  Their yellow leaves began to litter the bike path in August.  Their nuts can be quite a hazard to a jogger if it’s not quite light.  Still jacketed with their spherical rind, an unexpected foot landing on one can lead to a rolled ankle or even a fall on the pea gravel.  Such incidents led me to wait until it’s light enough to see clearly before going out for a jog.  You see, I like to exercise before starting work, so I jog at first light.  In June this can mean heading out even before five if the weather’s clear.  Since I start work around 6:30 this is a comfortable time to go.  Nobody else is on the bike path then.  And with Covid lurking, that’s a good thing.

The earliest sunrise comes about a week before the summer solstice.  By the time summer officially begins I already have to delay my jog slightly.  This is one of the great disappointments about Daylight Saving Time.  After winter’s long darkness, it starts to get light in the morning and I think to myself “I’ll soon be able to jog before work again,” but then we set the clocks back and set sunrise progress back by another month.  During the darkling months of the year I have to jog at lunchtime.  The changing walnuts always warn me that such a time is drawing near.  Already here in early September I’m getting back late for my usual work time since the sun is reluctant to throw its first crepuscular rays over the brow of the hill before six a.m.  The problem with this is that many more people are out on the bike trail at six than I ever see at five.  And often they don’t care to share.

There are a couple of older guys who walk abreast, taking up pretty much the whole trail every day now.  They hear me coming, look back, but like the marching band in “American Pie,” refuse to yield.  Single file for them is a sign of weakness.  I have to divert into the dew-soaked grass on chilly mornings to get around them with my now-wet feet.  I long for the days when I could easily jog before they even think of heading out to the trail.  The solitude of half-light.  The walnuts are the prophets of the tree world, however.  Their fruit is both nutritious and dangerous.  Scattered across the trail in the persistent dusk of a cloudy morning, they’re both a hazard and a warning.  And it’s a sign that the morning jog may already have to wait until mid-May to reappear.

Thoughts While Flying

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Uh-oh!  I seem to be airborne.  All that’s in front of me is concrete.  If I don’t do something, my exposed hands will hit first.  Tuck, and try not to hit your head.  Still, on impact the first thing I do is look around to see if anyone saw that.  It’s embarrassing to trip and fall, especially when you’re old enough to be avoiding that sort of thing.  I jog before it’s fully light out, however, and the sidewalks can be uneven.  Just in case anyone’s watching my Superman impression, I immediately climb to my feet and resume my pace.  I’ll be sore tomorrow.  As a jogger since high school you’d think I’d have this worked out by now, but you’re never too old to learn, I guess.

The amazing thing to me is just how much you can think in those fleet seconds that you’re actually in the air, about to hit the ground like a sack of old man.  That’s exactly what happened, though, from the split second I felt my toe catch in an unseen crack and felt my balance give way.  Taking additional steps while trying to straighten back up sometimes works, but my top-heavy head was too far out of sync and my feet were sure to follow.  Your memory of such things goes out of body and you watch yourself comically flying, without the grace of a bird, toward an unforgiving substrate.  Such is the fate of the early morning runner.  I don’t have time to do it during the day.  What if someone emails and I don’t answer?  They’ll think I’m slacking off.  Remote workers!

Despite the occasional spills, I’ve always enjoyed this form of exercise.  In the post-Nashotah House days while still in Wisconsin I’d sometimes do nine miles at a time.  Whenever I’ve moved to a new place I’ve gotten to know the neighborhood by jogging around.  Even if it’s not fully light you can see plenty.  (Although the cracks in the sidewalk aren’t always obvious.)  I tend to think about these things as life lessons.  Parables, if you will.  One of the deep-seated human dreams is that of flying.  Birds make it look so easy, and fun.  A human body feels so heavy when it impacts the ground.  I suspect that’s why we find gymnasts so fascinating to watch.  As for me, I’m just a middle-aged guy in sweats and wearing glasses.  And even as I head home I’m already thinking how remarkable the number of thoughts are in the few seconds while in flight, somewhere over the concrete.