My dear friend,
How are you? I hope this letter finds you well. Me? I’m enjoying the emerging spring in my winter climate.
Those who live in seasonally mild areas may not know the cozy but confining sense of winter weather. But I live in a place where the first day of spring is greeted by a foot of hard-packed-malingering snow that lines sidewalks and fills yards while the warming sun melts the sidewalks clear.
I love the shortening and lengthening of the days. I love the change of seasons.
Did I tell you that I’ve done a good amount of business in the Caribbean? I know this is ideal to some–and in oh so many ways it is! But I also find it confusing to my Northern Hemisphere sensibilities for one big reason: the length of the days.
The Caribbean day, for all pracical purposes are approximately the same length every day. every. single. day. The island nations are so close to the equator that they have approximately 12 hours of daylight each day…from about 6 in the morning to 6 in the evening. Now, that isn’t so bad. What really gets to me is that these 12-hour-days that only have daylight until 6 are Warm!
Warm days with a setting sun at 6 p.m. does not compute to this northerner. I am accustomed to the understanding that if the day is warm the sunlight lasts long into the evening! When the sun sets around 5 or 6 then the day is cold. Warm days have lengthening daylight. Does this not make sense?
But this is not the case near the equator for very logical reasons. You don’t have to tell me why. That is not the problem. I understand how the earth works. I’m saying that when I work in the Caribbean, from approximately 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. I have just spent all my daylight warm hours inside.
Of course the obvious solution to this dilemma to to play more in the Caribbean and work less. ..someday…
But here the days are lengthening and I’m basking in the seasonal pull of my spirit. I feel spring calling me to change with it. I hear spring calling me to change with it and never be the same but to grow, and rest, with the changing lengths of the days with the movement of daylight and the flirting of temperatures.
Of course I’ll continue to visit and work in my warmer places, but my heart, body, and spirit crave this waxing and waning. Does yours?
Until we meet again, please take good care of yourself and say warm…or cool…
Joyfully,
Tivesse
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