3:40pm
winter solstice - with photography by Nicholas J.R. White
When it came to granite, Earth was tireless in a tool-less endeavour. Ancient, eternal, older than dust. Granite is one of Earth’s original puzzle pieces through which we can glimpse, feel, smell - even hear – Earth shape shift into core, crust and continental form.
Born from slow rivers of magma, welded by impossible heat and pressure, granite is mapped by footprints of feldspar, quartz and mica – three mineral musketeers cantering forth from the underworld. Together, with uranium, thorium and potassium, granite becomes Earth’s radioactive backbone in continent, crust, cliff; curling stone and countertop. Blades dull at granite’s touch.
Upon meeting granite, sound waves travel at ten times the speed than through air. Meaning that, if I were to stand here, at 3:40pm, 538 metres above sea level on this granite homeland of other - and call your name – you might hear me sooner.
Should I shout? Or would a whisper be enough? After all, today the sun (sol) stands (sistere) still. Winter’s bones lie bare. Stone rows and circles sink into peat as though bitten. Granite heaped as though plucked and placed.
All is quiet.
Which makes me wonder. The fact that this place - this igneous homeland of other - was once a forest sliding toward the sea some 30 million years ago, before Earth’s fire rose in slow fountains and cooled into a crystallised chapter of acid and freeze and thaw, seems beside the point.
Because today, Earth leans at maximum tilt. There is elliptical orbit; rotational axis. Big words describing galactic gear shifts. The North Pole inclines away from the sun as through to regard her in her entirety – like I might you – taking you in from head to toe. Absorb, in photosynthesis.
280 million years. That’s all it took for granite to be here, becoming myth and math; legend and lore. Ragged. Raw.
When the winds howl and sweep us across the moors like leaves, the sky flashes red baring the moor’s teeth – granite is animal. Then, when the rains follow, we scatter like fry to our islands of granite - marooned and weathering on these titanic atolls.
Some granite is a devil. Another is a nose. Others are tombs and tableaus; meeting places and big little secrets.
It’s 3:40pm.
Stillness blooms as darkness nears. Above us, Orion fastens his belt. But slowly, deliberately, like the sun slinking behind gathering mist – light is returning, scratching at winter’s gate.
Yule log lit.
Oak King rising.
Winter is the question. Soon, light will answer, ascending like magma and we’ll remember our desire – wait – our need for this: the gentle shock of a star’s loyalty.
What is this place? Stories are written across these elder faces like laughter lines. Tales of moons and storms and symbols and our business here – be it merely space and station, or more like exploration... infinity and beyond. Except water, not laughter, was their sculptor. Water - hot and vertical, looping and braiding, rising and falling.
I circle granite, this Great Mis Tor, on my own elliptical orbit - my head at maximum tilt as I take it all in. Beyond, Earth’s gold coin is dropping, slotting into place like starlings to roost, ready for another spin. I reach out my hands, cupped, as though to catch her fall. And in this, the sun is all: have I got your attention?
love this – something about "a star's loyalty" caught my heart! thank you!
Wonderful! Mystical…. Beautifully captured 🌘