Once, when I was sailing 'round the Arctic Circle...

Madison.

It's the equinox today, and I notice that the solar altitude's nearly high enough to reach through the apartment's skylight well, down to the floor below. When there's a clear patch of sky, at any rate. Higher sun, longer days. And with that, all the reason necessary to look forward to spending a lot more time outdoors, biking, grilling, gardening, taking photographs. When the weather cooperates, that is. I must say, though, that I have a soft spot for vicious thunderstorms, with brilliant bolts of lightning and the sort of staticky, stuttering crack preceding the rumble-umble-umble that means the bolt was close. And for the light, warm rainshowers that are a true pleasure to walk in, too.

By the time the solstice rolls around, I'll be up in Washington Island, north of Green Bay. The day here in Madison should be pretty long - roughly fifteen hours and twenty minutes from sunrise to sunet. By heading north and east, it should tack on another ten minutes of sunlight, mostly to the beginning of the day. I doubt that little addition'll be noticeable, especially in different settings, but I'm still intrigued enough to be on the lookout for it.

It reminds me of when I was studying at Leeds, in a British autumn slipping into winter. Leeds is significantly further north than Pennsylvania, where I'd been previously, but the climate is much milder, to the point where the Brits can't handle a truly hot or cold day here in the continental US.¹ Even though winter was settling in, and the days were becoming alarmingly short under perpetually gray skies, it never really felt that way.

Then, one day, we were watching The Simpsons on Jack's TV.² "Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part 1." Burns strides into the town hall, and, just before blocking out the sun, calls out, "Have you ever seen the sun set at three pm?" About three in the afternoon in Leeds. The sun had nearly set. Seemed a little less funny that day, though much more so now.

Our reaction, I'm sure, was to head over the Brickies pub for a few beers.

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¹Several days' worth of 80°F weather in Brighton qualified as a heat wave. Not that I'm enamored of 100°F-plus with high humidity, but I can deal with it.

²Jack was our Korean roommate. Excitable, impressionable, and deeply in love with his newfound freedoms in the West. He even had a contraband TV that he'd haul into the kitchen sometimes. Contraband because he'd never registered it, never paid fees on it, which you're required to do for each TV you own in the UK. (You pay a reduced fee if it's only black and white.) Suffice to say, the reception was always poor, enough that lines would wiggle their way across the screen and the color would come and go. But, hey, Simpsons is Simpsons.