Summers are short and mild here in the Great Land. While the days are long, this most pleasant of seasons is not, and while we love the winters here, they are not to be taken lightly - and the return of the sun is always welcome. But today, on this third day of August, I saw my breath walking over from house to office, and when I got to my desk, our indoor/outdoor thermometer informed me that the temperature outside was 44 degrees.
That's chilly for this time of year, even here in the Susitna Valley where our climate is rated as "sub-Arctic." And we will still have some lovely, 70-plus degree days, through this month and even into September, if we're lucky - but by the end of September we will be having hard frosts, then in October the snows will come, and the land will once more pull a blanket of white over itself to sleep until spring.
That's a wheel that never stops turning.
This summer, of course, has been marked across much of the country by a heatwave that has the climate change crowd clutching at pearls and dashing for their fainting couches, as though North America had never suffered under a heatwave before.
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I have some vivid memories from my youth in northeast Iowa, probably the summer of 1978 or 1979, when we had a memorable heat wave. Triple-digit temps with humidity off the charts made for intolerable conditions, particularly in those days when not many folks had air conditioning. The nights were tolerable - barely - but by the time, the sun came up in the morning, the ground would steam, and in the dreadful stillness, one could hear the creaking and rustling of the corn growing.
The local teens spent a lot of time in the water; the Upper Iowa River became a haven of innertubes and rubber rafts. We all have the big, rubber innertubes meant for tractor tires, and with a few of those, one of which usually held a cooler full of ice and beer, (most of us were legal to buy beer at 18 in those days), one could pass the day in relative comfort. But sooner or later, we had to get out of the water, and heat or no heat, there were always chores to be done. The Old Man was fond of pointing out that nobody ever drowned in sweat, and there was always the cold, spring-fed Bear Creek right in front of the house to sluice off in once chores were done.
I spent a lot of nights in our tree house, a big, screened-in structure in a large box elder tree that overhung Bear Creek. The nights were more comfortable there, with the cool water of the creek below.
Then, one night, the mutter of thunder in the near distance woke me up. I sat up in the bed. A wind was stirring the tops of the trees. The sound of thunder grew closer. A front was coming through, a front of cold air that was driving a wave of thunderheads before it, and I knew that the heatwave was about to break. As I watched, the wind picked up, and then, downstream, I saw the creek turn silver as the first wave of raindrops hit the water. The silver line advanced, and then a downpour cut loose, a chilly downpouring of rainfall accompanied by lightning and thunder and wind, and the realization that, now, at least, things would be more comfortable for a while. We had survived the great heatwave, and somehow, hidden there in the rush of raindrops, there was a faint undertone of applause.
That's how we accepted the changes in weather in those days. Then as now, rural people are very aware of the weather, and we also know that the weather always changes. We deal with it as it is, without worrying overly much about what the next week will bring.
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Summer is more than a season, of course; it can be a metaphor. I'm pleased to see our four daughters enjoying the summers of their lives right now, even as their mother and I are distinctly in our autumn years; that, too, is a wheel that never stops turning.
It's been a busy summer. It's been an interesting and at times frantic summer, especially for us folks in the business of punditry. There have been times when it was difficult to find some time for a Sunday drive or a little fishing, what with the rush of events. The autumn ahead looks like it will be even busier, and while we all know what will be happening and can guess at the likely outcomes, we can take that up in another story.
Meanwhile, it's important to remember a few things: Our summers, be they seasonal or metaphorical, are over much too quickly. Take them seriously. Take advantage. Get outdoors. Do some fishing, go for a long walk, or just sit in the sunshine. Autumn will come soon enough.
