Here comes the sun

A couple of years ago, I started spending more time in Denmark in the winter, specifically on Samsø, a small island with a wildly fluctuating population: bustling in the summer months, remote and slightly reclusive once the weather turns.

At the time, it was family health related, not really a decision to be there as the days got shorter. But I learned that I truly love the slower pace that time of year: the deep quiet, the cinema run by volunteers, the way the stars provide the perfect lighting for an evening walk to the defunct flour mill.

And the sun. That weird slightly anemic Danish winter sun.

There is something about the low shy gently warming hazy ball of light that feels miraculous and intimate, in a way the full blast of the summer sun never does. Almost like a whisper or buried knowledge we tacitly share with those around us: don’t look now, but she loves us. Don’t look now, but we might be OK after all.

Part of this is the fact that we never quite know if we are going to see the sun at all. I joke that if you live in Denmark, you are going to have to assume you won’t see the sun between late October and mid March. And some years, it really is like that: a permanent slightly milky grey light passes for daytime for 4 and a half months, non-stop. Another knowledge tacitly shared: the sun is up there, we just can’t really see her. That too is OK.

I am flying back again next week. I can’t wait. Being closer to this obvious turn of the earth makes me feel closer to our shared humanity, somehow. Like I can hear us, see us, feel us try to be better together. Like I can imagine the world as it should be: a clean slate, a place to see everything we know from the outside in. A way to place it in order again.

Here comes the sun, I silently sing to myself. It’s alright.