Summer Solstice 2025—Accelerating Changes

          By walking dusty dirt roads on warm summery days in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies as a youngster, I learned to appreciate how much I could observe and enjoy while traveling on foot. Each new scene along the way would unfold slowly, allowing time to look, listen, smell, touch, and taste along the way. Moving through any setting, natural or man made, on foot, also allowed time to ponder and to think and to meditate.
          As I moved forward in life, and as life accelerated, I began to seek out special times for a return to a slower pace through walking, bicycling, paddling, sailing, or just sitting in a quiet natural place watching the world reveal whatever it held at that particular moment.
            Summer Solstices eventually became for me a special time dedicated to my desire to simply slow down. After all, there is so much daylight this time of year, why not take a little time to just decelerate, stop, and simply be?
            But as the years pass I see the world around me moving ever faster, accelerating in frantic motion and chaos. And when I slow myself down, the rest of the world seems to be blurred with speed. Development, population, climate, and world crisis all seem to be barreling with ever increasing speed down a steep grade, out of control, heading for a curve that simply can’t be negotiated.
            I don’t know what the future holds, but I do sense that the curve at the bottom of the hill is getting closer and closer. And I know I cannot stop the momentum.
            But I can, almost as if by magic, jump off this massive accelerating force from time to time to simply take a simple walk or just sit and think. Summer Solstice is the perfect time for this. And if the rest of the world falls off that menacing curve, well, I'll be firmly grounded and I’ll still remember how to walk.