2014 has been a year of weather extremes and the recent change to the climate here seemed to come overnight. After a very long, very cold winter, summer entered swift and fierce. Not that I’m complaining. That May and June arrived bearing copious amounts of sun and above normal temperatures (tonight we have fans running all over the house–a necessity that doesn’t typically occur until mid-July) is just fine with me. Sure, it means that Ray & I will start arguing about air conditioning sooner than usual (he’d live in a climate-controlled environment 365 days of the year, I like fresh air–even when it blows through the window at the temperature of a dryer exhaust), but an early, hot summer also means that our basil and tomato plants are already thriving and that I get to wear sundresses for a few extra weeks.
On my hikes these past days I’ve marveled at the rocks that I climb and and the groves of trees I pass through and the river I admire–astonished at how just a few weeks ago (really, like less than a dozen weeks) the scenery around me seemed to be from an entirely different world. Last night when Noah & I took Luca for his last-pee-of-the-night-walk in our lightest-weight pajamas we remembered, without regret, that same walk in January…when one of us had to put on mittens and boots and a hat and a heavy coat, just to walk to the tree at the end of the driveway.
The expeditious arrival of the new season has made me covetous, too. Especially because of the glacially slow changes happening inside me and around me–the way my writing aspirations seem stuck and it feels like I will never, ever get a job. Why, I’ve been supposing in the back of my brain, do some things seem to take so long? For today, I’m feeling buoyed by the warm air around me, hopeful that if I marinate it in long enough I will internalize some of the transformation I see happening around me. Until then, I’m pretty delighted to enjoy it just for what it is.
(Click photos to increase their size.)
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
~Albert Camus