Sun-Worshippers

For years I scoffed at that curious group of people called sun-worshippers. You know the typical Nebraska farmer or the Wisconsin druggist who, having made enough to retire on, arranges to have the home town paper forwarded and then takes his wife to San Diego, St. Petersburg or Phoenix to spend the winter months and become incredibly vocal about the wonders of the sun. I used to laugh when on one of those rare days of cloudiness in Tucson, some transplanted easterner would lugubriously complain about the dark weather. As a disgruntled health-seeker, I welcomed the cloudy skies I had known in Indiana.Getting into the state of mind of a sunworshipper is, I suppose, easy enough. Accustomed to years of humdrum life in cold climates, the winter tourists suddenly find themselves in this bright new land. Gone now are the chill winds of October; the endless, gray days of November; the dip into December cold; the ice and sleet of January; the shrill blasts of March. Instead the air is amazingly clear and the sun shines, today and tomorrow and always. And with the sunlight comes a sense of exhilaration, a feeling of freedom, an urge to live outdoors. With this is a sort of pity for the luckless ones back East. And pretty soon there is a dependence upon daily sunshine, a real disappointment when the day is cloudy. Next comes a proprietary air, expressed by such messages as "Our weather is tops" or "We have more sunshine than any other town in the country." Then follows a sort of condescension towards those benighted people who remain in northern climes. "How can they live in such a climate?" or "They don't know what living really is" or "The sunshine is free; why don't they come out and get some?"

But underneath my disdain, I enjoyed the perennial sunlight. Into that vast open sky morning after morning the sun would creep, gradually warming the town and the surrounding desert until by noon you would forget that this was mid-January and that back home the thermometer had slipped to 10 below. There was always something morale-building about that brisk morning sunshine, something as fresh as the first light wind of early autumn. There was something mellow and restful about the afternoon sun, too, something that called you to a rambling walk along palm-lined streets or to a slow drive along desert roads. And in the evening, likewise, the sun took hold of you.Then it died a slow, magnificent death, with a glorious funeral pageant of colors: violet and deep red and mellow gold. All over the valley, on the mountain tops, and across the wide, empty desert soft, fleeting colors attended the setting of the sun. Looking back I know that despite my professed scorn for the sun-worshippers, I secretly enjoyed the sun, even as they did. Sunshine is supposed to kill depression. But I would never admit that it had an effect upon me, psychological or otherwise. One day a lady who had spent many years in the town remarked to me, "No one can feel depressed in this country. The sun keeps everyone in good spirits." At the time I thought how foolish she sounded, because I had seen and known loneliness there. But I think there was some truth in what she said. Without a doubt the sun does have an effect; it does bring cheer; it does stimulate. And further, it gives all those western places an atmosphere like that of a mammoth playground. Go to Phoenix or to Tucson. The tropical surroundings immediately tell you that you are in a resort town; you see people resting and playing and having a lot of fun doing nothing. Despite war activity, something like the air of a summer garden party pervades the place. But what would it all be without the sun? Dull and colorless and surely unexhilerating. The sun is the last touch to the great scene of rest and recreation, the giant torch that lights up the show. And now robbed of the sun by living in a northern climate, I look back to the days when I knew the sun-worshippers. They used to fret because three or four days out of thirty were cloudy; we are lucky here if three or four days out of a month are sunny. And their querulous plaint was somehow like the complaining of children who, surfeited with games, grumble when rain puts an end to their fun, overlooking the fact that when the downpour stops the sun will shine again and the playing will go on. Years after I had left the sunworshippers, I realized that I felt much the same as they which fact only proved once more that we don't really appreciate a thing until we have lost it. Right now I can hear you saying, "This man is a sun-worshipper. He sounds like a representative of the Tucson Sunshine Club.' Maybe you're right. But I ask you, wouldn't you rather have the sunshine all about you, day after day, than buck up against the northern January wind or fight your way through a February blizzard? And, by the way, what was that fleeting gleam I descried through the fog about nine o'clock this morning? Yes, that was it our rationing of sunshine for today.

Joseph C. Ryan Instructor of English University of Notre Dame