Rhythms

Ten years ago, I first noticed that I easily called it a day when the sun set.  It was during my sailing sabbatical in 2006.  The world became dark.  I liked staying up long enough to see the early evening stars.  Sort of making sure all was right with the world.  And then I slept.  Sometimes I’d go below to watch a DVD movie.  Only I usually fell asleep after the opening credits.  It didn’t matter whether I had had a cocktail or not.  Or whether I was exhausted from too much exertion or not.  The sun had set; it was time to sleep. 

The other thing I noticed was that I didn’t need an alarm clock to wake up.  My body seemed to sense when the dawn was about to emerge from the dark and I would begin to stir.  During those sabbatical weeks along the Yucatan Peninsula, waking up at 6:00 am became a reliable part of the rhythms of my day.  The sun was about to rise.

Now I have thought that my aging body and mind have something to do with this rhythm.  It probably does.  Of late, I’ve noticed that the New Year usually arrives around 9:00 pm on December 31st… I figure it’s midnight somewhere three hours to the east, and that’s good enough for me!  But I also believe that living a little closer to nature’s patterns is part of it as well.  Go camping.  When you’re young you hang out around the campfire for a while.  And for many of us, the longer we live the earlier we head to the tent.  Telling stories late into the night are for the young mostly.  The elders look toward the dawn.  (We can’t sleep anyway, so we might as well get up and see the morning break.)

With each day, time passes.  And long before our modern cities with electricity and artificial light, people watched the skies and saw other rhythms.  And looked for signs.

Remember this one? “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning; red sky at night, sailors delight”?  An old saw that has been observed for millennia.  Shakespeare wrote about it in his play “Venus and Adonis”:  “Like a red morn that ever yet betokened, Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds...”   Red sky in the morning, a storm is approaching.

Even in Jesus’ day, red skies were observed.  In Matthew 16:2-3, in response to the Pharisees wanting a sign from heaven, Jesus says:  “When in evening you say, it will be fair weather: for the sky is red.  And in the morning, it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and lowering.  You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

Now there is scientific evidence that red skies are reasonable weather predictors.  Think about the sun low to the horizon at dawn and dusk.  Given that angle, the sun’s light passes through more of the atmosphere than when it is straight overhead at midday.  When there are particles of water in the air, the sun diffuses the light.  Red sky?  Then the light is passing through a lot of moisture.  No red, little moisture.  Red sky in the morning, there’s moisture in the air and headed your way.  Red sky at night, there’s moisture in the air, but it’s moving away from you.  (NOTE:  all this is based on the prevailing winds coming from the east, by the way.)

Sleep patterns.  Weather predictors.  As we age, we become more aware of nature’s rhythms.  So many of them.  Tides, every six hours.  Roosters on the hillside greeting the new day.  Swinging on an anchor.  The migration of the terns/seagulls.  The sun’s daily rising and setting, the moon in its quarters.  And then there are the rhythms we set:  birthdays, the weekly “date night”, Sundays/or Saturdays/ or Friday nights in the religious journey.  The rhythms are important.  They guide our living.  They help us remember our place. 

It’s 6:02 am.  I got up a little earlier than usual this morning.  It’s the way the earth is leaning toward the sun these days here in the northern hemisphere.   The days are becoming longer and the dawn comes earlier.   This morning, the sky is pale and the clouds are clearing.  No red skies so far.  Looks to be a good day.  Guess I’ll go scrub the bottom of the hull while Marney waxes the topside! 

Fair Winds

Calm Seas

Dave

PS:  My wife who is not that much younger, has yet to figure out the natural rhythms of waking  at dawn’s early light.  She sleeps with the innocence of a baby until she stretches, smiles with eyelids shut, then rolls over for one last catnap.  She lives with a different rhythm!  (She doesn’t know what she’s missing, and I’m not going to tell her!)