44° 16'

My sister gave us a disco ball a few years ago. We lived in our other house then and the children were still small. She intended the disco ball for the children's room, but that house had such high ceilings: we didn't own a ladder tall enough to hang it in the children's room, or anywhere else either – except the bathroom; but we already had a helicopter hanging in the bathroom. Eventually I hung the disco ball from an open shelf in the kitchen where the children could shine a flashlight on it. They played with it a lot at first but after a few weeks we all kind of forgot about it.

Then one day sunlight struck that disco ball. Sparkles appeared all over the kitchen ceiling and walls and floor. The children shrieked; they spun the disco ball so the sparkles danced and made me dizzy; little Sasha pounced on the bright spots like a kitty. Look, look, look! we shouted.

And then the sparks faded. After those few minutes of mayhem, they disappeared.

I phoned my dad. He's an engineer by training. Uh, Dad? Why? all of a sudden? Well, said my dad, let's think about that. So we talked for awhile about the movement of the earth around the sun.

I knew all that, of course. But also I didn't. I mean, I had never actually seen an example of the sun hitting a particular place on a particular day of the year. The sun moves across the sky every 24 hours; everyone can see that; but I'd never noticed it move over the course of a year.

That is exactly why I wanted to stop awhile, to stay awhile in one place: so that I, stationary, might sense the movement around me.

Anyway. In this house we don't need the brilliance of the disco ball to show us how the sun moves from winter to summer and back again; we need only eat our cereal. The kitchen in this house has one window facing southeast and one facing northeast. In winter sunlight shines through the southeast window, blinding us as we eat breakfast; in summer it shines through the northeast window, and we may breakfast in peace.

Also in this house there's a little window near the living room ceiling – little: maybe one foot high by four feet long – and in mid-January, on a clear day at 7:45 in the morning, the sun shines through that window to dash upon the stairs. We walk down into the light.

Dust and spiderwebs.

***

Bend, Oregon is at a higher latitude than Toronto. The sun's movement here is dramatic. This super-cool widget will show you quite clearly why December here is the darkest, hardest month. Set the time to 16:00, the latitude to 44°N and then drag that vertical bar across the months. Ack.