Summer On the Horizon

It certainly has been slow to arrive by the weather, which has been stubbornly cool and rainy this year; nevertheless summer has its official start this coming weekend with the solstice. And so we turn to the late nature writer Hal Borland, who wrote this about summer:

“Summer is considerably more than a solstice and the slow diminishing of daylight’s span in the annual march from spring to fall.

“Summer is misted dawns and searing afternoons, hot days, warm nights, thunderstorms cracking their writhing whips. Summer is shirtsleeves, sunburn, bathing suits, tall cold drinks, dazzling beaches and shimmering lakes. Summer is the green countryside, the cool fragrance of mountain pines.

“Summer is the house wren bubbling over with morning song. It is the long afternoon aquiver with the sibilance of the cicada. It is slow dusk freckled with fireflies — and prickly with mosquitoes. Summer is a meadowful of daisies, a field of corn reaching for the sun, a straw hat, a hoe and a garden.”

“. . . Summer is April and May grown into June and July, the green world working almost eighteen hours a day. It is a lazy river and a languishing brook. It is a vacation dreamed of, realized, too soon over and done, too soon a memory.

“Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January.”

Ready or not, here it comes.