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Today this beautiful beach is relatively unknown. By 2012 it will likely be forgotten. It will be destroyed by oil, gas, and chemicals used to disperse them leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from an explosion in April of a BP drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana. Emergency vehicles rushing back and forth along the sand crush the crabs, snakes, nesting birds, sea turtles, and endangered species of beach mouse. News of oil keeps the tourists away. How can they forget what they never have known? Or forgetting the recent disaster, if the US government lifts the temporary moratorium and Florida lifts its ban on offshore drilling and begins producing oil products three miles from here, we will have nearby oil accidents. Or Deer Lake State Park might be forgotten by me if the air becomes so toxic to breathe, that I leave the area and never return. So much for Blessings Beach, seen here on the west (to the right of the stairs down to the shore). Note the black debris along the water here is probably seaweed or peat fragments. On the day I photographed the sunset there were tarballs farther west towards the tall building. For the solstice on June 21 the beach was washed clean by tides and storm. However, some say invisible dispersants are in the water column and oil permeates the sand below. Early settlers reported a second line of taller sand dunes that previously protected the Emerald Coast. Now gone, lost and largely forgotten. This scene honors the solstice on June 21. This is the farthest north the sun appears during the year. This is the longest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere of earth and is the first day of summer. I have learned it is more globally correct to call it the northern solstice. One reason is because the calendars of some cultures are not based on months and June has no reference. The solstice that occurs for me in December is best called the southern solstice. I photographed sunset the night before the solstice, June 20, and sunrise the first morning of visible sunrise, June 23. Since this is a solstice, meaning sun standing still, sunrise and sunset times vary little in the days before and after the solstice. Since I wanted to know where the Sun was, it was not as important to have the exact date. The panorama shows the farthest north points of the Sun's path on the horizon during the year. Behind the scene : catching the sun for this panorama
Solstice sun extras: http://www.wholeo.net/Trips/Imagine/acts/ritual/solstice/juneSolstice10sun.htm March equinox 2010 suns: Food - sun-kissed apple Wholeo Online http://www.wholeo.net
Shortcut to this page: http://worldwidepanorama.org/wwp_rss/go/n6243
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