These words are written and posted on the internet by the power of the sun. And the fact of it makes me think of Richie Havens and Montana. We have just installed solar panels on our roof here on the very edge of the edge of Tucson, up against the Santa Catalina Mountains in the Sonoran Desert. And I feel like singing of the smiles returning to our faces.

It’s not the first time we’ve gathered the energy of the sun to power our home and lives. For many years, in the remote North Fork of the Flathead, on the west flank of Glacier National Park, we lived off the grid and off the energy of our dying sun. But that was in days gone past and, as Richie Haven’s put it, “it seems like years since it's been here.”

The meter on our inverter reminds us of the significance of our solar panels. It likes to record and display how many pounds of CO2 have not been injected into our atmosphere by the simplistic silent odorless workings of the panels, of how easy it is to reduce one’s impact on the world, if only one will try. And try we must, for it takes little observation to feel that the ice is, indeed, slowly melting.

 Back in Montana the panels had their work cut out for them. The low grey skies of winter, the endless snows, the hard realities of cold and ice, the rains of spring and the smoke of forest fires late into the summer all worked against the prospect of harnessing the power of the sun. And still those panels did their job, supplying our remote and isolated home with enough of light and power to see us through the night, to hear the music of the moment. And now, we once again are enlivened by the freedom that the solar panels bring to us and the hope they represent for the environment of the future. And so, as the sun rises this morning, I am tempted to sing out loud, “here comes the sun. And I say, it’s alright.  Sun, sun, sun, here it comes . . . ."