In summer our thoughts are with light and sunshine. But here, we appreciate all that is wonderful about shade
Sunny days are wonderful but isn’t it lovely to step into the shade, too? To cool off, open ones eyes a little and appreciate the sunny side of the street from the shadier side?
In sunshine terms, it’s easy to forget that shade is not its own entity but merely a shadow. Its etymology is in the Old English sceadu, or ‘shadow’ . There is literally no shade without light.
Some of its meanings are darker still. In the 15th century, a ‘shade’ was a ghost - a shadow of a former person, if you like. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, his guide, Virgil is described as a ‘shade’. It was not necessarily something to be feared; more a fact of life. Or death. And the state of being dead was often described as being ‘in shadow’ as in ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…’ It was believed that the dead lived in shadow in the underworld, with only a very select through making it into heaven’s light. Well, we can’t all excel at everything.
Wander through a graveyard and you’ll see many an older stone referencing shade… ‘Peace to thy gentle shade and endless rest’, as Alexander Pope wrote. The idea of death here is as a place of rest and cool, somewhere to lay down your head and look back on the sunshine years of your life. Not something to be feared, merely to yang to life’s yin. The shade to the sunshine. It almost sounds a little lovely.
So next time you pass under a shady tree, sit down a moment and enjoy looking out at the sunshine from its shelter. Cool down, rest. Shade is not only the foil to the sunshine; it’s something to be treasured in itself.
In our August issue, our My Place feature is all about shady spots, such as the one pictured above, belonging to Liz Boyd, The Simple Things’ Picture Editor.
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