Walking to greet the summer solstice
Reflecting on the midpoint of this year’s story
Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻
And hello to our new subscribers. If you’re new to The Writer’s Walk, I’m Sarah – a brand writer and content designer – and I like to break up my screen and desk time with lots of walks. Not only does this help to boost my physical and mental health, it also inspires the writing I do for my clients and for myself. In these posts I share an approach to taking a walk – I call it our theme – and pair it with a writing prompt.
We’re halfway through the year, which feels like a good moment to pause and catch our breath, so on we go with this edition on the summer solstice.
Walking
One of the things I missed when I lived in Honduras was long summer evenings. Being closer to the equator means the sun sets at a fairly predictable time each night. We leaned into this by drawing a line on the dive shop floor at the point where the light hit it as the sun was setting, and adding a sign that said ‘when the sun is here, it’s time for a beer’.
Having grown up in the northern hemisphere where the length of the days and nights is always expanding one way or another, giving you time to stretch into spring, or sink down into autumn, my body clock never quite got used to living in a place where the days and nights are almost the same length all year round.
But then once I was back in the UK, the autumn and winters hit me hard. Partly the cold – I’d got used to living in a hot, tropical climate. But also because in winter I really miss the light, so as spring turns into in summer I can’t bear to let a drop of it pass me by. So the summer solstice has become my favourite day of the year. The longest day, the most light. And more chances for a walk.
Thanks to a writer friend, who introduced me to a local walk in East Yorkshire after work one day, I’ve started walking in the evenings again to make the most of the magic hour. Just as the soft lengthening and shortening of the days helps our bodies adjust to the seasons, when we walk from the evening towards the night, our eyes adapt to the dimming light and it’s amazing how well they do this. We have so much light pollution we’ve stopped allowing our eyes and our senses to do what they do best.
In summer I love the fact that you have to wake up earlier to meet a sunrise, or hold your patience until the sun is finally ready to set…
In the past couple of years I’ve been slowing down, and my walks are often shorter in miles but far greater in moments. And I’ve felt more and more drawn towards the light and how it changes the texture of things. Sometimes, when the light is hitting the land in a certain way, I stop to watch as the landscape changes colour before my eyes…
And as we get closer to the summer solstice, I’ll wake early to greet the sunrise and take terrible photos of it…
Or I’ll take a sunset walk, so I can take a terrible photo of that instead…
I’ll go for a wander in search of the particular shade of blue that only happens at the magic hour…
And sometimes I’ll stumble into a moment when the light is touching the land at a certain angle, making it feel like a celestial message…
The June solstice is the midpoint of the year and, depending on how you choose to look at it, we can either be walking away from whatever’s happened in the past six months, or walking towards the things we’re looking forward to.
So for your walk this solstice, I invite you to choose a time of day that works for you – sunrise or sunset are great times to try this – and with each step you take, leave behind anything you no longer need to hold on to, and move forward into new possibilities.
Writing
The midpoint of a story, also called the turning point, is a pivotal point in a story. Everything that came before has been the setup to this moment. The character might undergo a crisis or experience a moment of enlightenment – for the reader of the story, looking in from the outside, this might feel like an ‘ooh’ or ‘aha’ moment. Things suddenly become clear, setting the scene for what’s about to follow in the second half of the tale.
So for your writing this time, I invite you to reflect on your year so far and your hopes for what it will bring beyond the summer solstice:
What experiences this year brought you to where you are now?
What possibilities will you seek in the second part of this year’s story?
Reflective writing can sometimes bring up challenging memories, thoughts and feelings as well as positive ones. So if that happens, and you don’t feel ready to explore them, then it’s good to stop and try again when you’re ready by focusing on something that’s softer for you. You could also try this from the perspective of a gentle ‘reader’ looking at your story from the outside, with kindness. The idea of these prompts is to explore writing in a constructive and safe way, so it’s important to feel comfortable with whatever you choose to explore.
As ever, I love hearing about your walking and writing experiences, so please share them by leaving a comment.
Happy walking and writing,
Sarah
More from the Writer’s Walk
If you like to celebrate the changing of the seasons, you may enjoy my Field Note from spring.
