Dear Audrey and Asa:

Although you don’t know one another you have more in kinship than you perhaps realize. Ties with Italy comes to mind, although I write of a deeper kinship appreciation for each of you. Audrey, you blessed me years ago with the sense of hope that is celebrated on the shortest day of the year, while you, Asa, convinced me of the joy in celebrating the gift of life on summer’s longest day. Two solstices a half year apart. 

Believe me, you two strong and beautiful women of commitment, grace and joy, who have devoted both your private lives and careers to the betterment of all mankind and our planet, for you have each humbled me. Through the years I’ve tried to honor your gifts by capturing imagery to express those two necessities of life.

You, Audrey, came as a prairie activist offering a glimpse and an appreciation of a geological past that now haunts us deeply … if we are simply aware enough to pay heed to the mere ghosts of a distant geological past. Back when grasslands stretched across the lands of what is now a vast nationwide patchwork of commodity crops, back when meadowlarks and bobolinks were as common as household sparrows, when visions of bison and antelope seemed on par with today’s white-tailed deer, and when prairie wetlands dotted the landscape as numerous as the clouds they reflect on days of perfectly calm waters. Yet, it was even a deeper past that touches me in the darkness of Decembers … that of light, of a pagan celebration that acknowledges the coming of days of longer light, of hope. 

You and Richard Handeen have religiously built huge bonfires on your rural Montevideo organic farm where we hovered besides burning logs to roast thin slices of venison and huddled close to the flames reaching skyward into the vast darkness. Usually you provided us with two large fires. One near your warm summer kitchen, often filled with music being created, and one deeper into the woods where we sat on straw bales with mugs of Cabernet and glanced through naked tree limbs for glimpses of the moon or those telling stars of Orion. Over the years as my sons grew into adulthood, your Winter Solstice bonfires and camaraderie rivaled Christmas.

Certainly the celebration of hope on this long, dark night grasped my interests long before meeting Asa. I now marvel of how well you two could be sisters, each aiming for hope while reaching for a clearer and better world despite the many obstacles, of how you each give tokens to both the openness and closures of the light of life. 

Asa, you came to us when we were regional coordinators for EF Foundation for Foreign Studies, a non-profit that brought high school aged exchange students to the States, of providing a sharing of family life with a stranger from another culture as if the teenager was one of our own. That’s what happened, time after time. And it was during this time, especially during the heady summer work of finding willing and suitable host families that you invited us to EF’s Boston headquarters for encouragement and, yes, a celebration of your dear Swedish Mid Summer tradition. That nod to light and joy. The Summer Solstice! Most of those celebrations were held in the EF headquarters along the Charles River and across the bridge from downtown Boston. One memorable summer you took us to your home where Rufus did the culinary honors. 

A Summer Solstice comes just a few days before the anniversary of the passing of Sharon, my wife of 32 years. For me there seemed a link between the two and I started looking back at those celebrations with both joy and admiration while seeking a deeper awareness of light. Sharon would have loved those Mid Summer moments when chairs replaced hay bales, and sunshine held off darkness as glasses were clinked and smiles and fellowship were shared with friends from around the world. So I thank you, Asa, for that correlation, for that way of celebrating not just the light and joys of life, but also the memories of the brightness of being.

Nowadays I make an effort to honor the Summer Solstice in much the same manner as I have the Winter Solstice. For both I find myself “chasing” light to in some way capture the essence of light and nature in a form of positive joy.; to create an image I believe you each might want to hold for a moment, to perhaps smile and offer a word of grace and fellowship between that light, nature and mankind. 

Hopefully in a some small way this capturing of light, the essence of our sun, comes across pleasantly and with the joy intended. Rarely do I begin my effort with a particular image in mind, although my Summer Solstice this year began with a lone tree on a prairie hillside. Would the sun lower in a way that would create an interesting image? Would the composition work? Would the stand alone tree be bathed with joyful light? Would joy be portrayed?

While all that might seem strange I can recall at least two instances when trying to capture light for a Winter Solstice came down to a momentary and sudden glimpse of colorful light mere moments before the darkening dusk. Struggles have occurred with the Summer Solstice imagery, too. A grouping of hovering swallows were caught in a near circle above the Minnesota River to save one day, and over the year storms have entered the pictures. But, isn’t that something you might expect in life? Despite all of our will to celebrate? Be it hope or joy? That there are storms?

It has been a long while since I attempted a “love” letter, and this one is perhaps a measly attempt at one. Yet I feel I owe you each an appreciation for your individual efforts for the betterment of our lonely planet, especially in these times of national and international turmoil. I feel I owe you each a great deal of gratitude for making me notice a need to appreciate and celebrate both hope and joy. Aren’t those are what the celebrations of the two solstices are about?

Sincerely,

Your Friend Forevermore