The summers are becoming hotter and hotter with each passing year. When the temperature hovers near one hundred degrees I cannot imagine how I was able to survive the first twenty years of my life without air conditioning. I remember it being warm, but nothing like the debilitating heat that keeps now me indoors for three or four months of each year. 

There was a time in my youth when I happily played outside all the day long, hydrating with the garden hose. I stayed cool wearing shorts and crop tops and cutting my hair short for the season. I’d walk across hot concrete in my bare feet and be so active that sweat accumulated on my neck in beads that locked like a necklace. I didn’t seem to notice the warm nights with the windows opened wide and the attic fan pulling in a muggy breeze. I suppose I was acclimated to the hot summer days because I never knew anything else. 

Even when school commenced after Labor Day in September I sat in classrooms without any kind of cooling system save for large fans strategically placed to send a bit of air across the rows of desks. There were walls of windows that opened to make the best of the ventilation. Being hot was standard fare for the first weeks of the school year and that pattern was repeated each spring. None of it stopped me from carrying on as though sweat was just a natural part of living in the south. I found ways to enjoy life and the great outdoors much like the folks up north adapt to the cold. 

Now too much time in the heat sickens me. I am like wilted flower waiting for more temperate times when I can return to dining on my patio and working with my plants. The weeds are collecting as I avoid the headaches and light headed feelings that overtake me after only a few minutes under the relentless sun. I wonder if this is a sign of age or just the result of being spoiled for decades inside air cooled rooms where I cannot feel the blazing rays on my skin. I worries me that I have become this way because I remember my grandparents toiling in the fields on their farm in hot summers when they were a good ten years older than I am now. The heat did not bother them, but of course their entire lives had been spent with few of the luxuries that I now take for granted. 

I get cabin fever and feel a need to travel to places were the summers are more moderate. I feel a guilty sense of envy for friends who summer up north and return to the south in October or November to elude the harsh variances of the seasons. I think of how wonderful it would be to enjoy spring like days in the middle of August when even my roses struggle to survive the heat. I feel so much more alive when I am outside communing with the flora and the fauna. I chide myself for not being able to ignore the heat and just gut through the experience like I once did without much thought or effort. 

I suppose that I could take a trip to the beach but I am more of a forest and mountains kind of girl. I like to explore on long hikes that take me farther and farther away from civilization. The more remote the place, the better I feel. I can hear the insects and birds calling one another. I can feel the breezes caressing me through the canopies of the trees. I feel as though I am in the paradise that Adam and Eve once enjoyed if only for a moment. Everything is perfect, my breathing, my heartbeat, my mood. I feel energized and ready to take on any challenges that may come my way. Being outside on a perfect day brings me back to life when my spirits are sagging. The outdoors is where I want to be. 

Of late I find myself searching each day for photos from a friend who has moved to Kodiak Island. She takes hikes in the evenings after work. The days are long up in Alaska so she has plenty of time to leisurely explore. She wears a light jacket with a hood in case it begins to rain. She seems to be alone in a magical place where she and the animals live in total harmony. She has seen mama bears with their cubs and starfish sunning on the beach. Mountains beckon along the horizon and wildflowers of many colors profusely grow along the paths that she follows. I have never seen anyone appear to be as happy as she is there and because of my own pull toward such places I understand why it is so. I live vicariously through her postings while doing my best to stay away from the heat that no longer leaves me alone so that I can be one with the outside world even on the hottest days. 

It will soon be just fine. I will return to my garden and let my plants know that I really do care about them. I will smile at the birds and watch the frogs and salamanders skitter across the lawn. I’ll put my hands in the dirt and feel as though I have placed them in a miraculous tonic that will heal both my body and my soul. My wait is almost over. I am ready for the times I love the most. The season of autumn brings my reprieve.