I am a morning person. I get up with the sun and the birds.
Perfect mornings for me begin at 5:30 AM. That happens for a few months of the year
in Northern California. And then it slowly descends into the hades of late fall
and Daylight Savings Time. You can imagine how thrilled I was when the sun woke
me up at 4AM. The problem is, I never get enough sleep.
It also doesn’t get dark-dark until after 10:30PM. Five
hours of sleep is not what my body needs. Then again, I tell myself, I don’t
have to be at work, don’t have any appointments to make, and if I get a little
spacey from lack of slumber, who cares?
But I do wonder if I would ever be able to adjust to minimal
night-time. I had always thought that the folks up in the polar region had the
best of it; nearly 24-hours of sunlight in the summer. I do well in bright sun,
really well. The same cannot be said for grey skies and diminished hours of
sunlight. I might be able to go to sleep at the correct hour – after all, it
would be equivalent to taking an afternoon nap. It’s the early morning sun that
would not allow me to stay in bed. I grew up hearing rise and shine as the early morning tinges of daylight crept though
the window. I feel like a sloth if I get up by the time the sun is bright in
the sky; not that I ever do that.
One has to remember that all this glorious daylight will be
supplanted by an equal number of days of gloom and darkness. However little winter
daylight one gets in California, it’s nothing compared to what they get in
England. I won’t bother going into the climate differences and the other
reasons this would not be a long-term country-of-choice. For now, it’s all
about sunshine and ancient history.
All kids in America grow up reading about ancient civilizations,
but it remains a completely abstract idea. If you are on the west coast, a one-hundred
year old building is old. Find a coin from 1902 and you’re thrilled. I ran
across an old beer can buried in the dirt a few months ago and actually saved
it. And then you come to a place like York.
I am not equipped to write about the history just yet, if
ever. All the bits about the city’s 2000 year history I have taken in over the
past week have become a cauldron of historical data swirling around in my head.
And that’s just fine with me. I know that York had Romans, and Saxons, and
Vikings, and Tudors, and this church and that church, and conquerors, and tradesmen.
I can’t remember if I have heard anything about witches, but I’d bet they
figure in here at some point in time.
Often, when I am out walking, I come to a dead stop and gaze
at the buildings and the street. I’ll touch an ancient Roman pillar and marvel that
it had been carved centuries in the past. Or stare up in disbelief at the York Minster’s
Great East Window – the largest medieval stained glass in the country. It is totally incomprehensible that it could
have been erected in the 15th century.
As usual, I get lost every single day wandering through the
twisty turn-y streets that encompass the center of York. Possibly, if I paid more
attention to where I was walking, I might get my bearings. But I am constantly
distracted by the quaint buildings and cobblestone streets, and imagining the
lives that have passed along these same routes for centuries.
Tonight I will be up until at least 11PM. I don’t like to
miss an hour of the solstice. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to stay in bed
until 6 in the morning, but I doubt it. Why waste sunlight when you don’t have
to?
