Short on Time

Today is the winter solstice - shortest day of the year. Officially the sun was up at 7:23 am and will be down at 4:14 pm (8 hrs and 51 min), but it didn't go above the horizon until after I was at work (7:45 am) and will be below hill out my window by 4 pm. But not like I could see the sun anyway, as the clouds are thick as New England Clam Chowdah.

For the most part, tomorrow's day will be as short and the sun won't start coming up any earlier until halfway through January. But the fact of the matter remains that from here on out the nights are getting shorter. No matter how bone chilling or grey it might get, each day for the next 6 months will be filled with more sunlight. Yeah.

Makes me think of my friends in Iqaluit on Baffin Island (Lat 63.5N). This great "city" just below the Artic Circle was established in 1942 as a US Air Force base and is now the capital of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, with a population of about 3,000. Today they had 4 hrs and 21 minutes of sunlight (yesterday's high was -15 degrees Fahrenheit). No wonder why Baffin Island is one of the most sparsely populated areas in the world - less then 10,000 people on a landmass one and a half times the size of Germany. Sweet, sweet Nunavut.

Archer Prewitt - Way of the Sun.mp3