camminando | Same Place Different Time

The first week of winter in the southern hemisphere,is announced by blustery winds and stormy water, even in the usually calm Corio Bay.

camminando | An Early Morning Hike at the You Yangs

It was a quite beautiful chilly morning after the longest night of the year (talking about the southern hemisphere, of course). Joe of HikeFit led a three-hour walk at the magical You Yangs. We hiked through eucalyptus forests, leading to open breathtaking vistas of the landscape stretching between Geelong and Melbourne, including water views of the Corio Bay. In the first hour of the hike we faced the winter pale sun heading east in the East-West loop. The sky was clear and the air cool, yet comfortable. Walking in nature always brings mental clarity and comfort.

The hike leader: Joe Ma of hikefit

Northern Solstice: Changing Perspective Point

 

Once again I am reminded that life is about change and adapting to change. For the past decade I have been celebrating nature cycles marked by sun positions in the sky: namely solstices and equinoxes. My celebration is quite simple: wherever I am in the world I go outside with my camera and take photographs of the sun rising and setting, to record these special marking of the sun in the sky. So far my sun recordings have always been in the northern hemisphere and I was referring to December 21 as the winter solstice day and June 21 was the summer solstice. Now that I am in the southern hemisphere I am learning to call June 21 the northern solstice, and December 21 the southern solstice. Everything is relative and now June 21 has become the shortest day of the day announced by the northward equinox, which once for me was the spring equinox.

This morning I woke up with the sense of depression which has become almost constant in the past two months —a cocktail of stress, anxiety, sadness, nostalgia and regret; but I decided to greet this important day of the year, even if for me was announcing the second winter in six month. I was rewarded, as the sense of heaviness lifted while I was witnessing the sun rising from across the Corio Bay. It was not really a spectacular sunrise, yet it brought a sense of calm and feeling of connection with this foreign land.

Walking back to my accommodation, I looked at low sun light from a different viewpoint, which offered one of the sought after sunrise compositions.  I had an epiphany that sometimes the same object of observation is more interesting and can become beautiful is seen from a different perspective point. Perhaps I should apply it to my troubled academic journey and embrace this change, although quite different from expectations.