Summer, a time of renewal, is well worth waiting for, so let’s make the most of it

The roads of our rural world are full of people walking, taking in the air after a busy day at work. It’s the Celtic dreamtime, and all of us know how much better it makes us feel.

The solstice was marked around the world this week, with thousands at Stonehenge in England on Tuesday morning to greet the sun at that ancient structure.

In Ireland, we marked the day by getting up at sunrise to watch the dawn over the hidden heartlands of Ireland at the highest peak of the midlands, Cairn Hill, in Co Longford.

The hill is an ancient space. It’s all Devonian sandstone and conglomerates. These rocks are found from the east coast of America through Ireland and Britain and on to Norway.

However, it’s for the Ordovician slate found in the northern parts of Longford that I have the greatest love.

This stone is old, around 485 million years, and the remnants of a former ocean floor. If the creation of the world were a day, a report on the geology of Longford says the slate on Cairn Hill would have been formed at 9.28pm.

What’s special about this Ordovician rock is that it’s found at the highest point on Earth. In this, our hill is our Mount Everest, and in walking it we can be our own private mountaineers.

Although 8,571 metres separate the two peaks, they are both no less sacred, both no less storied. In a way, we’re all linked by stones – they form our lives. It was the perfect place to see the solstice.

After our sunrise walk and viewing, things felt different. We’re different people. The world has changed so much in the past two years – a time when celebrations, when coming together for ancient rights and new ones seemed so remote.

When I think of summer, I’m conscious that not all made it to this point where we can travel again, be ourselves again, hold the nature of summer in our hands and embrace the good days.

The solstice marked a powerful time for the ancients, as it was a festival of renewal and one of merriment.

In Sweden, midsummer celebrations are perhaps still closer to the pagan rituals, and people there dance around maypoles. It’s believed that if a girl picks seven different flowers and places them under her pillow, she will dream of her future husband that night,

In Ukraine, before the coming of Christianity and its becoming a saint’s day, there was a pagan ritual involving bathing.

In Australia, my old home, it was the exact opposite this week as Aussies marked the shortest day of the year and the coming of winter in the southern hemisphere.

For many of us, this solstice is an opportunity to reset. Perhaps 2022 has not been what you had hoped, or you haven’t achieved what you set out to do, so why not use this break in the year to start over again?

For me, as I embark on a new writing project, I’ve used this time to set my goals for the rest of the year. Solstice is about fertility, so why not be fertile with work, I reasoned.

Now I wait for the rest of the year to bring its treasures. I think we find ourselves in waiting, in that mood between the great events, in the gaps between the temporal markers. EM Forster said: “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

I understand myself better now as I enter summer. I understand the land better in its own song; the song of the sacred terra firma. The druids came to seek closeness with their gods on the solstice. For me, I’ve come back to the land in ancient Longford to find peace in a weary world.

We can’t rush nature. It moves at its own flow with its own grace. Nothing can be rushed into existence; if it is, it can be a damaged thing.  

The physicist Carlo Rovelli says that to be an individual is a process. He says we’re complex and tightly integrated. He’s right, but I think to be an individual is an effort all our days to integrate not only ourselves but life and time. We’re always trying our best to make sense of it all. The good and the bad must be brought inside us in the prayer of life.

So, this solstice week, I hope you find your summer. Perhaps there’s new work in your life, a new fertility period that needs to begin.

This is the summer we’ve been waiting for. We’ve waited for two long years. Let’s make it count and make it one we can all remember, from a longed-for attendance at a GAA match to the last bale of silage in a meadow.

I greet you from Everest Ireland. Here’s to the new season.