The Passage of Time and Sun
On the Equinox, Ötzi the Iceman and the melt of my heart.
Twenty years ago, a murder was unearthed high in the Alps near where the border of Austria and Italy intersect. But this was no ordinary homicide. The corpse was over 5000 years old. The remains of Ötzi the Iceman were discovered by a German couple hiking the Alps in 1991. Experts at the time attributed his death to hypothermia. It wasn’t until 2003, when pathologist Eduard Egarter-Vigl and radiologist Paul Gostner discovered an arrowhead embedded in Ötzi’s shoulder, that the circumstances of this ancient death changed to murder. The arrow missed vital organs but most certainly made Ötzi’s final moments quite painful and drawn out. The locale of the arrowhead and the direction from which it pierced him indicated its aim originated from below his body. We might surmise from someone lower, situated on the same path of Ötzi’s flight. Over 5 millennia ago, Ötzi was shot from behind.
Yesterday marked the autumnal equinox. Fall was, for long stretches of my early adulthood, my favourite season. The time of year that most reminds me of Ireland, the apple-crisp coolness of night. Mist rising each morning.
But for the last quarter century, my heart has turned its ardour towards snowy winter and that is where it has remained frozen like Ötzi. In fact, the times of my life when I fell in love then and since occurred during the coldest months of the year. Something about visible breath, holding mittened hands and the audible crunch of snow underfoot that sets my heart ablaze like the hearth of a winter’s night. Winter melts my frozen heart every time. And ice melt, it turns out, relates to where Ötzi was finally uncovered, how he was preserved, the dispersal of artefacts near to him and the large pockets of time between their varied deposits. Ötzi was originally believed to have died of exposure to ice and cold and then to be frozen in time. Scientists now believe his death occurred elsewhere and, over time, his body slid into the gully where the hikers found him. Where he lay is believed to have gone through various stages of repeated freeze, snowcover and melt over eons.
Speaking of arrows meeting their mark, the autumn Ötzi revealed himself to the German hikers marks the first time I fell head over heels in love. It was the fall that followed a summer in Ireland where I became lost in fog in the Dingle Peninsula, an event in my young life that has coloured all the decades that followed. (Insert whisper of a promise to write about the fog at some future date here.) This morning, First Love is on my mind. Sometimes the ice in my brain melts and reveals moments locked in my hippocampus. Moments frozen, like photographs, in time. Moments that occasionally thaw.
My thoughts rotate briefly to the “Valdaro Couple,” a Stone Age twosome found buried in Italy locked in embrace. What is strange about their burial is that Neolithic burials were, for the most part, single corpses. And most burials of this age were situated post-death along the passage of the rising and setting sun, East to West. For unknown reasons that are buried with The Valdaro Lovers, as the couple came to be called, the pair were lain in a North-South direction. Was this somehow significant? Is it related to some form of ritual sacrifice? The health of their teeth indicates they were young. The timing of their discovery, so close to Valentine’s Day 2007, and the proximity of their burial to Verona where Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet met their own star-crossed demise sealed their romantic moniker in the press and ever since.
Each Equinox, I think about the path of the sun which is really Earth’s passage as it daily rotates and annually orbits our star. I’m Irish and 1991, the year Ötzi was found, marks the start of my growing interest in all things Celtic: the Celtic calendar, Celtic mythology and Celtic history. The Celtic Peoples clearly honoured the passage of the sun. In the Boyne Valley just North-East of Dublin lies Brú na Bóinne where an ancient Stone Age Temple was erected, famously known as Newgrange. Its construction is dated as close to the time of Ötzi’s life and death actually, around 3200 BC, making the structure “older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza.”
Of major significance is that Newgrange was built in perfect alignment with the path of the sun such that solar rays only penetrate its inner chamber around Winter Solstice each year, my favourite of all solar-related dates and celebrations.
I’m a sucker for the cosmic dance of earth and sun. Maybe that’s in my DNA. Ötzi was found to have 61 tattoos on his body. I’m not there yet, but one of my prominent tattoos is the term “perihelion.” It’s the point at which Earth moves closest to the sun and in the Northern hemisphere of North America, it is paradoxically in the midst of our winter because, despite our solar proximity, the tilt of the Earth means we turn our back to the sun. Our winter nights are long and daylight exposure is all too brief. Perihelion occurs close to the Gregorian new year (and very near my birthday.)
But autumn marks the coming of the Celtic New Year two moons ahead of the Gregorian calendar. And I love this celebration of life, death and the promise of rebirth, of growing light and life again that the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, celebrates. It’s a promise those of us in the northern hemisphere need on the longest night of the year.
The Autumn Equinox, for me, is the sweet anticipation of my favourite wintry holiday. Even if snow doesn’t fall as copiously as I’d like here on the Atlantic coast, I welcome autumn, the harbinger of winter. Equinox has Latin origins that mean “equal night” when Earth passes over the celestial equator and day and night are almost equal in duration. I like to think of it as a good time to seek out balance. Yesterday, however, unfolded far too chaotically for my kid and myself to bestow that gift upon us. The day began with locking our keys inside the car as we headed out for Saturday errands. Maybe how the day began and subsequently unfolded was meant to emphasize the importance of finding balance for us. Insert crackle of walkie-talkie. Message received, over. We couldn’t locate any balance yesterday, but will definitely keep searching!
October begins in a week. The leaves, at least here in #Halifax, have not yet turned. September has proven exceedingly warm and it wasn’t until Hurricane Lee hit last weekend that the air began to cool overnight. And cooler, longer nights are what hasten the burnt amber and golden glory of autumnal splendour in deciduous trees. Green leaves require the sun to make chlorophyll which ceases when the lengthening of night slows its production. The sun plays so many parts in how we mark Time. Daily, seasonally, annually.
For now, I will celebrate the arrival of autumn. I love its magnificent palette and locals tell me October is one of the best times of the year to visit the Maritimes because it’s especially spectacular here. I look forward to exploring our new home and enjoying the foliage with my kid (and my camera!)
Also to finding much more balance than we accessed yesterday. Here’s hoping all of us find some as the world turns. Happy autumn!