Maybe it’s just me, but August seems to be the new October. If any of you are experiencing the heat wave that’s (oddly enough) like global warming, my apologies. Around here—and local is what we all are—nights are cool enough to require blankets after our very hot July. In fact, I need long sleeves and long pants in the mornings, it’s so chilly. By mid-afternoon I’m starting to roast, but the grass is brown and that October feeling is in the air. Or maybe it’s just that I’m awake at odd hours and the perspective from this time of day is somehow prescient. Who knows? As I try to sneak a jog in before work I see the walnuts have already gone yellow. And I wonder.
We idealize the weather of our youth. That sense of oughtness sets in early. This is the way the weather should go. We’ve been pouring greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, however, for all of my life and before. The warning signs have been around for decades but somehow liars with false hair convince us that any progress ought to be reversed. I wonder if he’s been outside lately. The planet is constantly changing based on the larger picture. It has been doing this for eons, well before our species evolved. Thinking it was created for us distorts our thinking. The real question is whether we’ll be able to adapt. I can’t say the prognosis is rosy, given how we’re constantly trying to kill those who live just across that mountain range, or that wide river. We can’t seem to coexist.
I like October. Still, I can’t help but think of all the things we didn’t get done this summer because it was too hot to be working outside. Or we couldn’t get contractors to return our calls. Seasons change as the atmosphere tries to adjust to all the chemicals we cough out. October and its monsters seem to arrive earlier each year. I’ve been feeling it for weeks already. Seasons are really negotiations. Around here, in this temperate zone, we spend most of the year with the furnace on, taking the edge off cold mornings and trying to keep this drafty house habitable for about six months of the year. Everything’s constantly in flux and we simply try to adjust. Not even the sun will last forever. But for now I see the signs of harvest season beginning, and I feel the change in the air. And I can sense October just around the corner. So goes August.
