Day Length

Our home in Papagayos rests south of the Tropic of Cancer. In the summer the sun passes north of being directly overhead at mid-day, but the day lengths vary only about an hour through the annual cycle of seasons with the average day about twelve hours long. Nearly equal amounts of daytime and nighttime.

During our visit in Fairbanks, Alaska, in early July we got to experience the "land of the mid-night sun." Actually, Fairbanks is a little bit south of the Arctic Circle, but the daylight to dusk cycle fills each day at mid-summer.

For some reason I awoke at 1:30 in the morning on July 6th. I peeked out of the closed blinds in our camper and I could still see the green of the cottonwood leaves and the grass nearby. All nature called me to walk to the Chena River that flows past our campground.

The thrushes chanted their mantra to call the sun back for another long-in-the-sky day. It was not the spiral song of the Vermont veery or the heartaching beauty of the wood thrush, but their own sweet Alaskan melody. The mosquitos dive bombed my head using my ears for bull's-eye targets. A fish jumped to catch an insect for breakfast in the swift tannin filled waters. Two gulls flew upstream in their sleek flight jackets in contrast with the ragged shoreline white spruce trees.

By 3:00 AM there was color rising in the eastern sky, a blush of rose, and the sky overhead was brightening to blue with the approach of morning. There was plenty of natural light to read and write without using electric lights. The smell of damp cottonwood filled all the space between the water's edge and our camper as I headed back to the screened refuge of our traveling home.

Easter Week in Papagayos

The week leading up to Easter is called Semana Santa. Here in Papagayos, it's a time for visiting and for families to gather. It's a time for picnics. We went with Chayo and Hector and about twenty of their relatives on a picnic on Thursday. We crowded into three pickup trucks and drove several miles down pasture lanes and through cattle gates to a place in our valley that Laurel and I hadn't seen before. We sat on the edge of a large pond surrounded by shade trees. In spite of the fact we had brought enough food to feed forty people, Hector repeatedly threw his net and hauled in small fish to be cleaned and deep fried there over a campfire.

A tradition we imported with us from our culture is watching the sunrise on Easter. Laurel and I got up early and took lawn chairs out to the yard. Facing the hills to the east, we sat and sang a couple Easter hymns. As we waited for the sun to clear the horizon, we watched a flock of about thirty garzas fly in from the north. These long-legged, long-necked herons wheeled above us. For ten minutes or so they were a mass of two opposing spirals as some chose clockwise and some counter-clockwise in their dizzy circling. As we looked upward, each garza was a profile without detail, a silhouette appearing dark gray to us against the brightness of the imminent sunrise. One by one they dropped out of formation and spiraled lower to land in the full lavender bloom of a jacaranda tree. As we watched each bird dip below the eastern ridge against a backdrop of dark green foliage, we saw each silhouette burst into a feathery collage of detail and change instantly from gray to bright white.

Our six-year-old neighbor Gabriela reminded us about a week ago that she remembered our annual tradition of hiding candy and colored eggs. Mid-morning on Easter, we went over to Gabriela's house and told her that yes, the Easter Bunny had come and had left colored eggs outside in our yard and candies in our house. She and her younger cousin and brother came over and searched and found the treasures. The Easter Bunny isn't accustomed to traveling to Mexico, but for us and our neighborhood children, he'll make the trip.