Summer's Over. Almost. And Too Soon.

Adapted version of blog originally posted in August 2010.

From June solstice until September equinox, summer lasts only 91 days. Back in early May, it seems like so much time. Summer then is capacious. Stretching out before us, its arms are open wide to good intentions. Here at last, we tell ourselves, is the one summer we’ll made good on our promises. We’ll deliver on our plans. But the more we get into it, summer gets smaller, shorter, so unlike winter, the long winter that’s looming and too soon on the horizon.

By the end of August, the days shrink with less light. The sun retreats behind the Camden Hills before dinner guests move on to dessert. Ferns crisp and goldenrod blooms. At the farmer’s market, apples bump aside berries. Lobstermen haul traps further out, as shedders, hardened up, move into deeper water.  On Route 15, a few roadside maples sport hints of orange. Suddenly, June’s timelessness vanishes. In our memory’s eye, the 4th of July parade is a meteor that once streaked across the sky.

In these final summer days, I can’t help but assess. What, I wonder, of those new hikes I’ve yet to take, the books to read, recipes to try, people to meet? What of the constellations that this summer I pledged to learn? Or the pile of granite cobbles I thought for sure I’d transform into something attractive for the garden? And in the garden itself, why weren’t the hydrangeas transplanted into a bigger bed or a new trellis erected for the sprawling climbing rose? Wasn’t this the summer I planned to learn, really learn, how to sea kayak? And where are all those poems I aimed to draft? The letters I’d actually, in a throwback, pen? Or those solo picnics I’d take down to the shore? Didn’t I promise myself more afternoon hours sprawled in the hammock with no other place to be?

How easy to lose and overcommit time in summer. One too many houseguests. One too many concert or theatre tickets purchased. One too many dinner invitations extended or accepted. As the late-in-the-season cicadas thrum out the last of summer’s days, it’s easy – too easy – to count up our regrets. To weigh and assess. To consider what, with another season’s turning, we’ve let slip past.  

For the lobsterman, farmer or inn keeper, summer is the “make it or break it” season. For them, it’s the season of economic necessity. Mostly, for the rest of us, for those retired or able to work year-round via Internet and phone, the summer is the season of promise. Of brimming opportunity. Summer the season that in June holds forth so much fullness.

But maybe what we reach for in summer, what we try to make of it, what we promise ourselves to do with it, is, in some small way, a throwback to childhood. To a time when summers were long and the future distant. And when, possibly, summers were actually, well, a little too long. When, come August, we got a little itchy. Pre-Facebook and smart phone, pre-car pool or two-plus car families, we missed our pals. And whether we knew it or not, many of us missed the familiarity of small desks and wide school corridors. As we spilled from sweltering classrooms in Indian summer with daylight still lingering on, enough to get in a few innings or laps on our bikes, time seemed so much sweeter than it had all July and August.  

Back then, as summer simmered back to its end, we may have whispered, if only to ourselves, “Yes. At last.”

Translated now to: “No. Not yet.”