I never really gave daylight savings time much thought growing up, it was simply something that happened, and quite frankly, it didn't affect me much. As an adult, the time change wasn't as noticeable as the sun's arc across our western horizon from the winter solstice on December 21 to the summer solstice in June.
Like most communities in Utah, Cedar City is laid out on the grid platform with streets facing north-south and east-west. While serving a mission in Texas, I realized the grid system's uniqueness. A person is either north or south of the center street and east or west of the main road. An address, 50 N 1200 W, would place you within the first block north of center street and 12 blocks west of the main street. When I arrived in Texas, I was dumbfounded by the street letters and names. It took a while; however, I learned that they had a method to their street address madness after all.
I live west of town, and at certain times of the year, as the earth shifts on its axis, moving our community from summer to winter and back again, the setting sun will line up directly with the east-west facing road. If it weren't for the mountains west of town, there would be no possibility of driving west with the blazing sun's brightness directly in your eyes.
Cedar City also resides close to the Arizona and Nevada borders. If I drive south for about an hour, I leave Utah, passing through Arizona (the state pays no attention to the foolishness of Daylight Savings Time) and into Nevada. As the sun moves from east to west, Cedar City sits relatively close to the end of the Mountain time zone before moving to the Pacific time zone. Las Vegas, for example, sits reasonably close to the beginning of the Pacific time zone. One doesn't think about such things until the clock jumps back in November; in Cedar City, it gets dark at 6:00 pm, and in Las Vegas, it is 5:00 pm.
On December 21, 2022, the shortest day of the year and the winter solstice, the expected sunset time for Las Vegas is 3:54 pm. My beautiful wife Linda worked in Las Vegas for a short time, and visiting her during the winter was always strange. Mentally I understood there was only an hour difference; however, even though it would be 5:00 pm when the sun set, the realization that it was 4:00 pm in Las Vegas blew my mind.
I thought the whole 4:00 pm dark in Las Vegas blew my mind until I discovered that the sun rises and sets at precisely 6:15 every day in Ecuador. So, at 6:15 am, the sun comes up, 6:15 pm, the sun sets. Every day, the whole year long. Sorry, that would drive me crazy. But, watching the sun march across our horizon where in the summer it is light enough to hike and enjoy the outdoors well past 9:00 pm and moves ever so slowly to 5:00 pm creates a beautiful rhythm to life that I believe would be absent along the equator.
Linda and I visited Ecuador and stood on the equator once while on our way to the Galapagos Archipelago Islands. It was such an exciting trip that I hope to write blogs about in the future.
Written November 6, 2022