I really like summer. I even like the heat, but I especially like long, sunny days. However, even for me, the longest days of summer are kinda. . . . long.
What’s perfect is the day length in, let’s say, July. When the sun rises no later than 6:00 AM, there’s daylight to wake me up when I want to get up. And when the sun sets around 8:00 PM, it gets dark right around the time I’m ready to wind down ahead of getting ready for bed.
As we head on to mid-August, though, although the temperatures are still fine, I’m no longer so happy with the sunrise and sunset times. Today the sun didn’t rise until 6:04, which isn’t much after 6:00, but is a sign of the approaching dark days. Similarly, it’s been a full week since the sun was still up at 8:00 PM—another sign.
This morning I realized that I should refer to these two things—sunrise after 6:00 AM, and sunset before 8:00 PM—as two horsemen of the Darkpocalypse.
Back in the days when I had to work in an office, this mid-August transition would ruin the fall for me. I’d get so wrapped up in dreading the winter, that I couldn’t enjoy the objectively great conditions of the second half of August, all of September, and usually most of October as well. It was very sad to have nearly a quarter of the year ruined that way.
I should probably add a “darkpocalypse” tag, and go back and put them on all my posts about SAD.
Horsemen traditionally travel in groups of four, but if there are two more, I haven’t identified them yet.