Intrinsic to bushcraft is an awareness of seasons and natural rhythms. June 21st is the Summer Sostice (or, if you're Australian, the Winter Solstice.)
Most people know it as the longest day, or the first day of summer, but the word actually means 'stand still of the sun'. If you go out at noon and measure the angle between the horizon and the sun, you will find that, day to day, it has gradually been getting higher in the sky. However, the rate of change has been gradually slowing and next week it will be barely getting higher at all. On the 21st it reaches it's highest point.
Similarly sunrise has been getting earlier but just now, only very slowly.
Suppose you were standing at the North Pole on the 21st. The sun would never set. It would just go around the sky in a circle parallel to the horizon.
Further south, on the Arctic Circle, the solstice is the only day on which the sun never sets. It grazes the horizon, but does not disappear behind it.
Lots of people get up early for the sunrise- can be a bit of a non-event in cloudy weather though:
http://www.solsticesunrise.co.uk/
Most people know it as the longest day, or the first day of summer, but the word actually means 'stand still of the sun'. If you go out at noon and measure the angle between the horizon and the sun, you will find that, day to day, it has gradually been getting higher in the sky. However, the rate of change has been gradually slowing and next week it will be barely getting higher at all. On the 21st it reaches it's highest point.
Similarly sunrise has been getting earlier but just now, only very slowly.
Suppose you were standing at the North Pole on the 21st. The sun would never set. It would just go around the sky in a circle parallel to the horizon.
Further south, on the Arctic Circle, the solstice is the only day on which the sun never sets. It grazes the horizon, but does not disappear behind it.
Lots of people get up early for the sunrise- can be a bit of a non-event in cloudy weather though:
http://www.solsticesunrise.co.uk/