Solstice for Sailors

Solstice seems like a good holiday for sailors to acknowledge. It’s all about the ebb and flow of our natural world. It names a background phenomenon that both ignores our desires and affects our lives.

One of our most challenging tasks we face as sailors is to divine the patterns of the natural world. We pretend that we harness the wind when we in fact grab an opportunity to go along for a ride and hope it continues to go our way. Solstice is one pattern we can foretell.

Our man-made materials struggle to find communion with elusive, barely visible fluid forces that existed long before we hung the first skins from cut tree trunks to pull us toward our destinies. We can’t harness or conquer or subdue; we can only incompletely predict and hope for benign neglect. Solstice requires nothing of us but a nod to its passing.

Our sailing reminds us we’re alive, nurtures our need for connections to nature and soothes the turmoil of our modern minds. On solstice, if we look as closely as our ancestors did, we see the promise of a return to sunny days, warm winds and liquid water.

My best wishes for the coming year.

Jay