I find it hard to describe the few weeks run-up to summer solstice. I feel as if there is not enough of me to stretch into the heady long days. I cannot expand myself to feel it all – the smell of summer coming, the fresh leaves, the expectation, and that undercurrent, that something else none of us can put a finger on. I want to dissolve into it, every molecule fizzing into the season, expanding and stretching my soul into the dusk, the 3am light, the days that could go on forever, if we just let them.

I belong here, in these few weeks. It tugs my heart and I wish with all my being that I could just hit pause and stay in this rush of energy, of light and warmth, for just a little longer. It’s the final few seconds before the rollercoaster tips over the top of the track. That last held breath, the possibilities, the surge of adrenaline and hope and fear and just life, life, the joy of experience, all wrapped up in endless daylight and growth and wonder.

I feel the sun, pulling us all upwards, trees spreading branches into huge skies, reaching as far as they will go. I reach my hands upwards, stretch, lengthen my limits and my soul and my thoughts. Every part of me belongs, finally.

I hop and fizz each evening as twilight begins to descend, eyes bright in the gloom that’s never quite darkness. Soul season, bare feet in late nights with the ghostly flit of moths, the bats, the deer quietly whispering through the long grass. The campfire twang from millennia past, the feeling that one moment stretched back over echoes, hints, a scent on the breeze. For these few weeks I am wholly, truly me.

It’s four days before solstice and I breathe this headiness deep into my lungs, treasuring every smell, every rustle of every leaf, each caress of that breeze on my skin. I place my hands on tree trunks and share that deep contentment, where light is plentiful and the days are warm. I push down that knot of sadness that all too soon it will be over, darkness returning, temperature falling, the UK grey seeping in at the edges – but for now, I dance into my season, on and on and on into these endless days.