Vernal Equinox

Vernal Equinox 1999
The last one of the millennium.

What is it? Well, it's the moment when the earth's axis is, you might say, perpendicular to the radius of its orbit. That is, both poles are equally inclined to the sun. (Really wish I had a diagram here for you.) What am I talking about...diagram? How very Sixties. (Really wish I had a cool animation here for you.)

What happens? Everywhere on Earth has 12 hours day and 12 hours night. It's a togetherness thing. A bonding. And it only happens twice a year, on March 21 and September 21.

Anything else? Yup. You know that old expression...the sun rises in the east and sets in the west? Well, its true today. Exactly true. By the time you get round to reading this you've probably missed the sunrise, and after all, it is Sunday (coincidence or what?) but if you care to peep out of your grimy smoke-stained window (or clean one) at 6pm, you'll see where west is.

Southern Hemisphere readers should reverse the above, and watch the sun set in the true East. They tell me the sun and the stars go the "wrong way" down under. Fascinating, yet at the same time de-stabilising. Travel doesn't "broaden the mind". It exposes you to things you were never meant to see.

As does the News - that nightly manifestation of the Devil incarnate, with all his works brought right into your living room to enjoy with your fish fingers. Salt and sauce? Or Holocaust?

People who feel the need to trot all over the place in aeroplanes, imagining they are "experiencing life" in their 14-day chosen paradise, simply fail to see the fascination right under their noses where they already are.

But back to millennia, and I want you to join me in a couple of "thought experiments", as my much missed mentor Albert used to say. As I sit here "sort of writing" my thoughts to you, by pressing plastic keys which will send pulsed electricity to a magnetic disc on which I rent space, I want you to project your mind forward 1000 years and imagine, if you can, what kind of world there will be on that vernal equinox in 2999.

Will there be computers? Will there be writing? Will there be people?

It's of course futile to speculate. But this next one isn't. Now I want you to cast back to March 21 (or its equivalent) in 999, when we know there were people. And I want you to try and guess what they thought that day - what dreams they might have had for their children's children.

In my fond imagination I see a man, much like myself, sitting pondering the future of his world. And maybe even writing down his thoughts and his hopes and his dreams.

Not by pressing plastic keys, cos there was no plastic. And not by magnetising ferrous dust, for magnetism was much more primitive then. But nevertheless recording his awe of Creation, and the mystery of Consciousness which allows our species the power of wonder on such a scale.

Be that man yourself for a few minutes today, and then try and make a difference.

The young swans on the Water of Leith have been removed.

Wildlife, Nil - State, One.