By the time I finished all my chores, it was 5:30. There wasn’t much daylight left. I went for a walk.<\/p>\n
The shortest day of the year. The planet shifts twice a year. Every year. Without fail.<\/p>\n
Our mountain roads have no streetlights and not much of a shoulder. I strode quickly to stay warm and keep my heart rate up. I carried a flashlight but didn’t turn it on.<\/p>\n
Many of the houses were dark. Only two cars passed me.<\/p>\n
The darkness was a blanket. I watched from beneath a corner of its cover. A man out preparing the grill on the deck, a woman gathering firewood from the stack, a father and son unloading their truck … they didn’t know I was there.<\/p>\n
Lesser details disappeared as the light faded. How glaringly intense some house lights are, like a fire in the woods. People use bright lights around their house thinking it is a kind of security device. Their house is then surrounded with deep dark shadows where anyone, anything could easily hide.<\/p>\n
My best security comes from my acquaintance with the dark.<\/p>\n
Dark moments, dark hours, this year has had more of them than I thought I could endure. And it was not the first dark year of my life.<\/p>\n
Here I am.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow the daylight expands. The light will be winning again.<\/p>\n
Today’s penny is a 1974, the year Rufus with Chaka Khan released Walkin’ in the Sun <\/em>on their album Rags to Rufus<\/em>.<\/p>\n Things have been goin’ wrong long enough to know <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By the time I finished all my chores, it was 5:30. There wasn’t much daylight left. I went for a walk. The shortest day of the year. The planet shifts twice a year. Every year. Without fail. Our mountain roads have no streetlights and not much of a shoulder. I strode quickly to stay warm … read more Walking in the dark<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[193,495,1085,200,307,1371],"class_list":["post-10098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shelter","tag-193","tag-dark","tag-hiding","tag-light","tag-safety","tag-solstice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10098"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10117,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10098\/revisions\/10117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nEverything is right
\nBeen walkin’ in the dark long enough to know
\nFinally seen the light
\nBeen losin’ long enough to know when I’ve finally won
\nAnd even a blind man can tell when he’s walkin’ in the sun<\/p><\/blockquote>\n