Time turns relative at summer solstice

Does anybody really know what time it is?

The modern answer is just look at your watch or check the calendar. But such markings can be deceptive.

Consider "summer": Most of us would suspect it's about a third over. For our more urban, scientific sensibilities, summer pretty much runs from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day, roughly paralleling school vacations.

Technically, though, summer began just last Monday.

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June 21 marked the summer solstice, the longest amount of daylight for the year as the sun was farthest north. From Chicago west through Nebraska, there were 15 hours and 2 minutes of daylight. Six months from now, the winter solstice, the day with the least amount of daylight, arrives.

Most calendars also note the solstices are the first day of summer and of winter.

The solstice means very little in the 21st century. For urbanized society, it's just a little extra daylight to enjoy after work.

To the ancients who based their cultures on agriculture, however, summer solstice celebrations abounded. The Celts held Alben Her-uin, the Gauls the Feast of Epona, the Romans the Feast of Vestalia, the early Christians of Europe the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Stonehenge and many other strange, almost mystical sites from prehistory likely served as observatories that helped determine the solstices and equinoxes.

Curiously, most cultures of Europe through the Middle Ages considered the solstice "midsummer," as it marked the midpoint in the growing season.

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The great monotheistic religions of the past millennia purged those pagan celebrations from our world. And modern science, evolving from Isaac Newton's belief that the natural world operated mathematically, so to know mathematics and physics also was to know God's presence in the universe, has added additional layers of separation.

For example, trains - the great invention arising from understanding the physics of steam - forced upon all the world standard time. After all, trains can't keep a schedule if each town has its own "time." Yet our farming pioneers understood that the sun rises earlier in Chicago, by virtue of the city being farther east on the globe, than it does in Iowa.

Once scientists' measurements determined precisely how many seconds the Earth revolves around the sun, governments even changed our months with leap years. Such adjustments are necessary or within centuries the solstice will occur mid-spring.

Or there is daylight-saving time, that effort to even from month to month when sunlight falls upon us. With school children, it's simply a safety issue. But it also means the first Sunday in April has 23 hours and the last Sunday in October has 25.

It's a game of beat the clock.

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For most us, however, the ancient rhythms die hard. Perhaps it's because so many of us have grown up on farms and are the first generation to move to town. Maybe it's simply because all of us need food; certainly a sense of seasons and their cycles offered an evolutionary advantage in humanity's distant past.

In Iowa, midsummer falls somewhere around July 15. By that time, we should be able to walk through waist-high corn, the points of their brilliant green leaves still sharp, the soft silk of their ears yet to come. The humidity prickles. During a good year, there's enough rain to keep down the dust, meaning brilliant sunshine and fresh air greet all who cross a field.

As summer wears on, the amount of green one's eyes can behold will stretch to its upper reaches. So also will the moisture in the air as it presses against us, making an easy walk in spring turn into an aerobic workout by August. But such extremes are worth it. Soon the yellow flash of school buses and the orange, red and mauve of fall leaves will herald the return of crisp, cold air.

Regardless of what our calendars say, regardless of our watches, time will have moved on.

(originally published June 27, 2004)