It will have to be taken on faith or by past performance that the sun arrived in Durango on time Saturday for the summer solstice.

Heavy cloud cover over Raider Ridge prevented the sun’s rays from entering a solstice window in the Center of Southwest Studies to project on the opposite wall a spiral design common among solstice-conscious Uto-Aztecan cultures in the pre-Columbian world.

Only occasional breaks in the clouds allowed bright, sharp partial images to be seen. But never observed was the complete spiral that artist Scott Parsons created in glass and which was placed in time to mark the solstice in 2000.

In a word, the solstice was a bust.

Thomas Matthias, a Durango psychologist, seems to have the same black cloud over his head as Joe Btfsplk, the Al Capp character in “Li’l Abner.”

Matthias was at Stonehenge for the winter solstice in 1987 when clouds and drizzle canceled the show.

But Matthias was philosophical Saturday.

“The solstice today was not overtly dramatic,” Matthias said. “But it was spectacular in its own right.”

Dave and Elizabeth Dillman, teachers at Durango High School, dragged sons Charlie, 8, and Artie, 4, out of bed to see the celestial event.

It was the first FLC solstice for the Dillmans, who have been in Durango for a year after 12 years in Loveland.

“At least it beats Saturday-morning cartoons,” Dave Dillman said.

Colleen and Steve Peachey, who are in Durango visiting friends, chatted while waiting for the light show.

They’ve worked in various places, including Mission Viejo, California, and Tualatin, Oregon, but are retired – he from computer test-equipment sales, she from the medical instrument business.

They’re footloose – traveling in a motorhome in various Southwestern states and as far south as Guadalajara, Mexico.

“We don’t have a permanent home,” Colleen Peachey said.

While about 70 visitors waited for the sun to perform, they listened to Sunny Gable, a Durango resident who took up violin at age 6, play a Bach cello suite on her viola.

The spiral image projected on the wall in the Center of Southwest Studies, in good years, lasts about an hour, brightening and changing shape before disintegrating and fading.

Parsons was commissioned to create the solstice window through the Colorado Art in Public Places program.

It took him three years to develop the concept and design the glass window. The window measures 18 by 22 inches and is encased in a 450-pound block of concrete.

A friend, astronomer Don Asquin, worked out the mathematical formulas to determine the placement of the window.

Observation of summer and winter solstices and spring and fall equinoxes to mark the change of seasons dates to antiquity.

At Stonehenge, which was built around 3100 B.C., the sun can be observed through a stone circle as it rises at a certain point on the horizon. The ancient Mayans and Aztecs also observed the position of the sun in relationship to fixed points on the ground.

And finally, summer arrived officially in Durango at 5:51 a.m., and the sun set at 8:35 p.m. – 14 hours and 44 minutes of daylight.

daler@durangoherald.com