The most bearable part of winter is that the days start getting longer. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year — sunrise around 7:30 a.m., sunset around 4:15 p.m. in this neck of the woods. As dark and as cold and snowy as it can be, the one constant of winter is that we gain a minute or two of daylight every day, so even as we descend into the cold we literally see more light every day.
The best part of spring is reaching toward this glorious longest day of the year, the first day of summer, when the darkness is as vanquished as it ever will be. The most bittersweet part of summer is that for all the sunshine and warmth, we start losing a little bit of daylight, a minute or two at a time.
“It’s the four seasons,” we like to say, and I would rather have all four than to be somewhere where it’s the same all the time. On the other hand, being sunny and warm almost all the time doesn’t seem so bad anymore.
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