Last of the Summer Whine

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.”

— Natalie Babbitt, from“Tuck Everlasting”

When I was a schoolkid in Oregon, I knew it by the thick smell of ripening blackberries— we were coming up over ‘the top of summer,’ staring down the steep slide into autumn. Time to buy pencils and new shoes.

Here in the Allegheny mountains, we know it when the corn comes up, a sudden forest from which guilty deer dart out across the road in the morning twilight. Thunderstorms sweep down the valleys and fireflies wink in the fields.

If we’re reaching a moment of inertia in this strange year, it’s suspended between the overeager push of ‘back-to-the-workplace, back-to-normal-life’ and the backwards pull of variants and fourth waves and patchwork guidelines. Friends are returning, cautiously, from video conferences to backyard barbecues. Masks are returning, along with the kind of news stories we’ve learned will do us no good to read and fret over.

Where will the next spin of the Ferris wheel take us? We don’t know. Maybe it’s a good time to just enjoy the view from the top.

How do you enjoy the last lazy days of summer? We’d love to hear your thoughts or memories.