I have a friend who's a massive pagan. A few years back she wanted to do a rebirth ritual. A bunch of us took her up to an iron age hill fort and we helped her do the ritual overnight. It ended with her being symbollically reborn just as the sun rose above the horizon. Fucking awesome. Then we all sat together on the hillside, eating sandwiches and drinking whisky and mead while she recovered from what had been a pretty deep, trippy, and emotional experience.
10/10 - would help a friend be reborn in the dawn again.
Took a flight with a stop in the arctic circle. It was winter so it was in 24 hours of darkness. Made it to the states and landed for customs in the early morning. When we took off we broke through the cloud cover just in time to see my first sunrise in 36 hours
Now imagine this:
I lived in Inuvik for three years (Dad was stationed there). For three consecutive winters I lived 30 days of night. You think you get SAD "down south"? You ain't seen nothin' 'til you've faced a whole month of nothing but twilight conditions or darker.
Which brings us to my first Sunrise Festival.
This is the most memorable sun-related event in my life, displacing even the total solar eclipse I experienced in Wuhan a few years back. For 30 days there was no sun. Further, for 15 days the "twilight" portions of the day got darker and darker until it was basically nothing but night. Then, for 15 days, in the depths of SAD you've never felt the like of, it got brighter and brighter at the high parts of the day.
Until the day of the Sunrise Festival.
This is the day that basically all work stops as close to noon we gathered out in the streets and playgrounds (in my case) and such to watch the sky. Watch the twilight get brighter and brighter and brighter. Until suddenly the sun peeks for a few minutes above the horizon, blood red, staining the sky, only to dip quickly back down.
Sure we've got another month of really, incredibly short days before we face something similar to normalcy, but it's all good. It only gets lighter from here.
The sun is back in town.
For me it's more a combination of stories, but for me it was when I was younger, when we would spend the night together with friends in summer. Summer nights are quite short over here, the sun can rise up as early as 5:30, so if we were busy the all night, we were always a bit surprised to see the sun rise. It's definitely a strange feeling, in a nice way.
