When I was a kid we would spend a lot of time up in the mountains camping. I loved running around playing with my cousins and stuffing my face with smores whenever someone lit the campfire. On one particular occasion, my grandmother taught us a new game that we had not played before.
The game was called “shadow tag”. The premise of the game is very similar to the classic game of tag, but with a twist. Instead of physically touching the player, you must make your shadow touch theirs. My granny told us it was a game played by our ancestors when they were crossing the plains of Western America.
Shadow tag became our new favorite game. We spent hours chasing each other’s shadows. We learned pretty quick, however, that as the sun went down our shadows got longer and longer. By the time the sun crest your shadow seemed to by fifty yards long. You can imagine the difficulty in avoiding the person who is “it” while dragging a fifty-yard shadow across the field. It kind of defeats the fun in the game.
As common sense tells us, the steeper the angle of light, the longer the shadow is cased. In the early morning and late afternoon when the sun is almost parallel with the earth; your shadow will be the longest.
