Essay: My favorite time of year.

It’s my favorite time of year and it is because of the light. When I was growing up, summer was my favorite time of the year.  It was hot and sunny and I got to swim every day and turned a nice brown color.  Now I live in a place where summers are mostly sunny, but rarely hot and often I don’t even bother to own a pair of shorts because the weather does not require them.

Also now too, I’m an adult and don’t get to swim every day even if it was warm enough to compel me to.  I still like summer, even the “bring a sweatshirt” variety that is Portland, Oregon, but now my allegiance has switched to late spring.

Sometime in late April or May it begins to get light very early.  When I am a steady exerciser, I am a morning exerciser.  I also seem to gravitate to paid employment that begins early.  This means that I get up very early to exercise which, for the past six years, has meant being out the door by 5:00am.

Let me tell you that for most of the year, 5:00am is DARK.  I wear a reflective vest, I peer through the dark of night and I’m going to have to eventually wear some sort of light on my head to better see the many things that can trip me up.  Most of the year, it is hard to get up at 5:00am.  It is dark, and cold, and rainy and I just want to sleep for a little bit longer.

However, sometime in late April, the light shifts and I just start waking up.  First at five o’clock, then earlier and earlier until my eyes pop open at 4:30 with no trouble at all.  I also need less sleep.  During the dark months I fall asleep by 9:30, and battle every morning to drag myself out of bed.  When it gets light early, I’m up until 10:00 easily and my eyes automatically open at 4:30.  I also have more energy.

I attribute this surge to my left over agrarian genes—telling me to get up, get out and till the fields—get the corn planted, the chickens fed, the gardens weeded and watered.  It makes me wonder if I’d be happier shifting my sleep pattern to follow the sunrise, sleeping in later in the winter, getting up earlier in the late spring and early summer.  This will probably not be a thing I will ever get to experiment with until my retirement as the jobs I seek have firm start times.

It’s a brief period, this magic time of light.  By mid-July the morning runs begin their slide into complete darkness and I am left to enjoy the (comparatively) warm and (comparatively) dry mornings for the rest of the summer.  Then the rains come and it is another long wait for my favorite time of year.