The darkness was tomb-black. Through all of our breathing, the spell thickened as a needle of light stole across the chamber’s floor. The mind is a strange thing, hovering between past and future, aware of its own ability to draw meaning from an occurrence. As the glow lit our shadowy faces, we smiled and murmured with pleasure, but it was stronger emotion that brimmed my eyes.
We were inside Newgrange, a neolithic monument built about 5,000 years ago by people who studied the sun’s movement with sufficient attention to pinpoint the moment when the season changed. To catch that brief occurrence, they built a cantilevered stone chamber and covered it with a mound of earth. Above the entrance to the passage from the outside world, they fixed a narrow aperture aligned to the winter solstice. On that day, a clear dawn floods the interior with golden light.
Modern astronomy tells us precisely how this happens. During the year, the sun’s path across our sky is altered by the elliptical shape of the Earth’s orbit. In the northern hemisphere, as winter deepens, the sun seems to drift south. Its arc narrows and slumps, which nudges dawn (from left to right) along the horizon. Heat goes out of the days. Shadows lengthen. Night dominates. With the season’s progress, the daily shift in the sun’s movement decreases. And then it stops. This is the moment of solstice, when time itself seems to stand still. After that, dawn reverses direction along the skyline as the solar arc climbs back to summer’s zenith.
Writing ahead of 21 December, it’s time for me to admit that the narrow beam I saw illuminating the chamber came, not from a midwinter sunrise but, rather, from an artificial light simulating it. I was part of one of the regular tours for those people not lucky enough to win a golden ticket to enter Newgrange during the actual solstice.
Arguably, my experience wasn’t real. But the dark chamber was real. As was the reverence of our small group. As was my body’s reaction. Because the mind is a strange thing, flitting from here to there, between then and now, all the while anchored by the deep past. Because it’s still the same moment when, at last, darkness shrinks from the light.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
