Midsummer Morning

Central Massachusetts

July 1st. Today we stretch our arms into the heart of summer. I rose early, early enough to watch the sun and dew transform a million blades of grass into a sea of dewdrop diamonds. I watched the fog curl from the stream towards the sun in shimmering bands of light and mist. Morning is magic, especially a midsummer morning just after the rain.

We wait all year in New England for these elusive summer days. It takes nearly all of June to fully shrug of winter’s edge. And then, somehow, you wake up on a July morning with the sun on your skin and know you’ve but a few short weeks to take it all in. So we trek to the ocean to taste the salty kiss of summer. We visit every quaint New England burger stand and eat all the soft serve ice cream for dessert. We take to the trails and the woods and find our place to camp in the hills of Vermont.

By next month, we’ll be thinking about school. By September, fall will whisper all around us in cool breaths of change. But today, on July 1st, it is summer. And summer in New England is not to be mocked.

If the last decade in Massachusetts has taught me anything, it’s how to live right now. Winter is long and simply waiting for it to pass will do you no good. You must learn to live as fully in February as you do beside the ocean in July. So you perfect your favorite hot drink and build a roaring fire to sip it by. You go outside in the snow wearing all the clothes (and they are many) to stay warm enough in the cold. You learn to match winter’s stubbornness with your own and come to appreciate the stubborn New Englander’s grit and resolve.

And when summer comes, as summer always does (though you may doubt it in March), you learn to go outside and live. For summer is a breath and a kiss and gone yet again.