There’s a lot of moaning this time of year about the absence of after work sunlight. In the summer, I can get in a 3-mile hike after work. Now it’s dark before I leave the salt mine.
It’s true that if you punch out at 5 this afternoon you’ll only have 3 minutes before sunset, and maybe 25 minutes of useable light total. It’s also true that the issue is less a matter of available sunlight, more a matter of not looking for it in the right place.
The following post originally appeared Dec. 12, 2016. We rerun it today, with a tweak or two, because it expresses our appreciation of the season that lies ahead.
Winter’s skies are milky, indifferent. Its landscape monochromatic, a wash of grays and browns. Its weather harsh at times. And Lord knows the season is stingy with sunlight. The stuff of travel & tourism ad campaigns winter is not.
The best thing about hiking on a cold winter’s day? You can hike forever.
For starters, the cold itself is good incentive to keep moving. And the more you move down the trail the more you realize what a magical time of year this is in the woods. Winter’s sunlight knifes bright through a leafless canopy, illuminating a forest floor littered with coppery leaves. Somehow, those gray tree trunks manage to evoke a sparkle. Winter’s dry air cranks up the volume the season’s quiet. It’s an experience you don’t want prematurely ended on a 3-mile trail.
The following is a version of a piece we run every year at this time, a time when our spirits are buoyed by day by cloudless skies and cooling temperatures, but bummed when those days of sun end earlier and earlier.
Most of us don’t expect the day — the daylight part, that is — to end so soon until the demise of Daylight Saving Time, which is Nov. 6 this year. So when we walk out the door on Oct. 6 expecting to get in a hike and discover a setting sun that will be completely set by 6:52, we’re taken aback. And a bit sad.
Saturday’s GetHiking! Winter Wild hike at the R. Wayne Bailey-Caswell Game Lands near Yancyville was cold, really cold. But the brilliant blue sky more than made up for the 28-degree temperature. If I had a nickel for every time someone on the hike said, “What a beautiful day!”, I’d have a dollar thirty-five. A little sun can make up for a lot of cold.
