Today is the summer solstice – an especially long longest day up here in the north. With sunrise at 5:14 and sunset at 9:06, nearly a 16-hour day. Early today, as the half moon was setting, my dog, Ben, and I greeted the solstice watching the sun rise above the clouds and fog on Park Point, the great 5-mile stretch of sand beach along the southern shore of Lake Superior that forms the Duluth harbor. Today of all days, I had expected a variety of others out on the beach to watch the sun rise on this longest day, but surprisingly we had the beach to ourselves the entire time, with the exception of the crows and seagulls that beckoned Ben into a run, only to wing into the air, leaving him wondering how they do that.
I’ve had another memorable summer solstice on that beach. On that day in 1994, just a few months after my heart transplant, I finally received the call from the transplant center that the rejection episode I’d had ten days before had stopped. As I wrote then:
“The tears poured out of me, a waterfall of tears at the gladness of the reprieve. I was alive! I wasn’t dying now and I wasn’t dying soon. . . . I was alive I was alive I was alive. I wanted to shout it to the world, so I went to the one place in the world that I have always felt most fully alive – the great sand beach – and there on the night of the summer solstice Sam (my dog) and I ran the length of the beach, reveling in the tail ends of the last rays of the sun on that longest day. The beach stretched before us as the sun stretched out the day as my life now stretched before in a way that it hadn’t until that moment. I was going to live to live to live to love to shout to run to dance about in the waves we ran and ran and ran and ran and ran . . . As we slowly walked back, the moon began to rise, so looking in one direction we saw the setting sun and looking in the other we saw the rising moon. We were encircled in the heavens, and I was alive!”(Journey, 125-126).
My life has indeed stretched out before me since that time – 28 years without a hint of rejection. I’m walking that beach now, more than running. My dog, Sam, sadly had a much shorter life than my own. Indeed, I’ve loved and lost two other dogs since that time, but I was grateful for Ben’s steadfast companionship this morning. What a blessing, these canine companions. I’ve not known a summer solstice without one, or two, for the past 45 years.
One other summer solstice holds a particular meaning for me. Most likely it was 1964, the first year we spent at the cottage in Michigan which has been the summer gathering place for my family, the final resting place of my parents and more than one of the family’s dogs, and my soul home. It was there on that day that I first witnessed the miracle of the transfiguration of the dragonfly nymph – an ugly, creepy, brown water creature – into the glorious, diaphanous winged creature we know as the dragonfly. That day, dozens of them crawled out of the water and lined the dock posts and any other place they could find where the sun and wind would dry out their delicate, dewy wings enough for them to lift into the air on a breeze to begin their airborne existence.
Since that time, I’ve been quite enthralled with dragonflies. I always count myself fortunate when I am able to observe their emergence from water to winged insect. It is so stunning to witness their transformation. I feel my own heart lift off with them each time I see one take to the air for the first time. What must that be like for them, I wonder – to live for five years in the water, and then in a matter of a few hours, to discover their wings and fly – an entirely new way of being in a brand new world. In indigenous cultures, dragonflies are regarded as messengers of wisdom and enlightenment. In Chinese culture, they are seen as signs of good fortune. For me, they represent symbols of hope and possibility, that we too might be able to discover our own true nature, and rise above the trappings of society in all our brilliant colors and fly! I’m reminded of the words to “A Piece of Sky,” from the musical, Yentl, sung as Yentl rids herself of the straitjacket of gender -- “The time had come . . . to try my wings . . . I felt the most amazing things . . .The things you can’t imagine if you’ve never flown at all … I’ve a voice now; I’ve a choice now . . . If you can fly, you can soar!”
After weeks of mosquitoes so thick we’ve not been able to venture outside without being covered head to toe, draped in mosquito netting and bug suits, the arrival of the dragonflies on this summer solstice – and I’ve seen hundreds of them flying about – are a welcome sight for a very pragmatic and mundane reason – simply that their diet consists largely of mosquitoes. I recently heard on a segment of MPR that dragonflies are particularly skilled and efficient predators, successfully catching and consuming 95% of their prey. I suppose I should be glad that they are not their prehistoric ancestor, the griffinfly, that had a wingspan of more than a foot and were the largest insect on the planet,[i] but rather are now simply creatures of delight, with the added benefit of balancing the insect biome around me.
On this summer solstice, it seems fitting to pause and give gratitude for the blessings of the sun – light; warmth; the very sustenance of plants that shade and delight and feed and literally give us the air we breathe through their ability to photosynthesize sunlight; the energy that more and more powers our electrical gadgets and heats our homes; and perhaps, starlight for others in some distant galaxy. And for me on this day – the blessing of possibilities -- of a long early morning barefoot walk along the shore with my faithful companion, of the emergence of dragonflies, and of the simple joy of being alive.
Notes
Bartlett, Elizabeth Ann. Journey of the Heart: Spiritual Insights on the Road to a Transplant. (Duluth, MN: Pfeifer-Hamilton, 1997).
Bergman, Alan and Marilyn. “A Piece of Sky” from Yentl, 1983.