Six More Weeks of Summer

I realized one week ago today, the day of the solar eclipse, that I am kind of the seasonal opposite of Punxsutawney Phil, the prognosticating groundhog from Pennsylvania, but instead of forecasting how many more weeks of winter we must endure, I am speculating about summer and how much longer (*shudder*) it could go on.

As much as I try to love all four seasons (because how awful would it be to dislike a full quarter of the year?), I simply have never been able to enjoy summer much. It's blast-furnace hot all day, and just when it starts to cool down, the mosquitos come out threatening everyone with West Nile virus and spoiling the evening. Yes, it's nice in the middle of the night when it's cool and the stars are shining in a mercifully sunless, typically cloudless sky, but I'm usually asleep then.

I remember enjoying summer a little bit more when I was in elementary school and spent every free moment at the community swimming pool. If I got too warm, I just jumped into the water.  If I got too hungry, I bought something at the snack bar with my "underwater tea party" friends. Time flew by at the pool, and life was good.

But one summer hour at home is roughly the equivalent of a whole evening at home during the schoolyear. A teenaged babysitter taught me to crochet one summer -- a skill I probably would not have learned any other time of year. I read a lot of books and drew a lot of pictures and watched a lot of reruns of Gilligan's Island and Leave It to Beaver on afternoon television, but I could only take so much unstructured time before becoming listless. To alleviate the boredom, my family would go to Kansas City Royals games or pile into the car for spontaneous weekend road trips -- most memorably due north from Kansas City to the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. Ahhhh, I loved everything about Wisconsin, especially the cool, dense forests.

In retrospect, I've never really wanted to vacation on a tropical beach anywhere (though I have enjoyed such vacations.)  I've always wanted to go further and further north. Despite seeing wild bears everywhere (one of my phobias), I was perfectly at home in the Yukon Territory. Given enough bear repellant, I could easily summer there.

At least once every summer as a child I visited my grandparents and cousins in Quincy, Illinois, a town surrounded by cornfields on the Mississippi River. It has to be one of the most humid places on earth, with all of the corn "sweating," as corn does, and the deep, slow river evaporating. A short afternoon walk to Zim's for a soda or to Deter's for ice cream was made bearable by the shade of large trees. I remember becoming physically ill at church in Quincy because of this dome of humidity. The Mormon church in town back then did not have air conditioning, and a folded paper fan can only do so much to cool a body down.

I was home alone during the eclipse, so I took a break to sit outside for half an hour and watch the event unfold through a makeshift pinhole contraption that didn't actually work. (Fortunately my neighbor called me over to look through his welding helmet.)

While I sat there baking in the sun I realized how rare it is for me to be outside this time of year. I tend to stay underground, like Punxsatawney Phil, unless forced out by once-in-a-lifetime celestial events.

The bad news is, I saw my shadow, which may mean six more weeks of summer. The good news is that it will then be fall -- my favorite season of them all.