Summer

Ah, summer. I used to know a girl named Summer, but this isn't about her. This is about the season (though if summer had a gender, it would be female). Where I live, summer does not last long. My joke is that it ended July 4, and then begins the slide toward fall, my favorite season. Basically, it lasts about six weeks, but no calendar will tell you that. Still, summer has such lovely qualities, and this summer has been especially long and summery. Here in the Black Hills, summer is tourist season, but even those who live here can celebrate its specialness. People come here to recreate in a place that isn't so scorchingly hot. It's true. Many homes here don't even have air conditioning because it cools off enough at night they can simply open their windows for cool sleeping and then close them again in the morning to keep their homes cool during the day. (Naturally, I am the exception to the rule because I have a small air conditioner for my tiny apartment, mainly because it is brick and retains heat but also because I can't open the windows at night due to the noise level from the bars.) Learning to live in this unique environment has been a challenge for me. I do, after all, live in the city with the highest elevation in the Black Hills.

Summer here means hailstorms. I got caught in a few early in the summer. It's not a whole lot of fun. They flare up and move on just as quickly, though. You can recognize the tourists because they stop to take pictures of the great mounds of hail. My car was devastated by a hailstorm this summer, which smashed the windshield and pocketing the sheet metal. But summer also means the smell of the pines is sweeter and stronger. It means the deer fawns are hiding in the tall grass with their mamas off somewhere doing whatever does do. It means I got to see a herd of elk on one of my many hikes, surprising me once again, even though I've seen elk plenty of times. They appear and disappear like soundless ghosts. After they are gone, you begin to wonder if you even saw them.

This summer, I hiked many times in the burn area of the Jasper Fire, which was set by a lone (and deranged) person 20 years ago and burned more than 80,000 acres. I like the area because it's so beautiful and sparse. I love that it turned into grassland (It was recently replanted with approximately 1 million pine seedlings from, of all places, Hasley, Nebraska). I have seen quail and cicadas (both almost unheard of at that elevation) there, and even frog carcasses, along with the usual suspects of robins, meadowlarks, northern flickers, and coyotes. It is a strange place, indeed. Those hikes were incredibly healing for me, as I can talk to my God while I walk with nary an interruption. I can take off my shirt and get a tan (or, more likely, a sunburn), feel the wind on my chest, marvel at the panoramic skies, and listen to the songbirds in the grass. It is a powerful and moving place, much like the undulating grasslands of Nebraska I enjoyed years ago. There is something about the sparseness of some places that allows you to see into eternity. It's almost like the obstructions in our minds cease to exist, just as the obstructions in the scenery cease to exist.

You can do the usual summertime things here. Swimming. Getting dirty. Sweating. Getting a farmer's tan. Getting sand in your shoes. Mosquito bites (we don't have many here, but they still bite). Fireworks on the Fourth of July. When I lived in Nebraska, it seemed every summer had an insect bloom of some sort. One summer it was June bugs. Another it was Boxelder bugs. Yet another it was millers (moths of some sort). Here we don't have many bugs. Not even the cluster flies this year. But what we have my son has befriended, cradling them in his hands and telling them everything is fine, just relax. It reminds me of how I cradled fireflies the same way when I was a boy. 

It's hard to believe in a few short weeks, my son will start kindergarten. What's even harder to believe is he yet again lost his babysitter, and without a backup. What we will do those few short weeks, I don't know. If anyone is still counting, that was his sixth babysitter. It doesn't look like God will provide a seventh. Maybe God will provide some other way. We'll find out soon, one way or another. 

We've been going to the lake a lot. I even got sunburned on my feet (ouch!). Going to the beach this year is a very different experience for me. It was packed the first few weeks by people who were probably fleeing some sort of lockdown elsewhere. I had never seen so many cars at the lake. They lined the sides of the road the whole way in. It was good to see. Some people don't believe the hype. Some people just want to live their damn lives because life is too short to sit at home, especially during a long, hot summer. Our governor believes in the state motto: Under God, the people rule. And the people don't want to be cooped up. No China-style lockdowns here, thank you very much. Right or wrong, we will live and die with our decisions. And, frankly, when you hear stories like this, it makes you wonder: a local man wanted to attend something in another state with his family. They required them to get tested beforehand. The man received the test, didn't open it or use it, and sent it in for testing. All tests came back positive for his whole family. He's not the only one with strange stories. In other places, some people even tested positive for tests they never received! You hear enough stories like that, and you conclude we're being lied to. This time, at least. Maybe not next time. But I digress. Here, we have nearly no restrictions. Here, we are still free. For how long, that's up to God.

The families you see at the beach are amazing. The level of preparedness, the thought, like packing for a trip to the beach is something they do professionally, is astounding. I thought for three seconds about going to the beach and then did it. These people have trolleys of stuff, tents, a ton of chairs, ice-filled beverage containers (with actual beverages!), portable stoves. I mean, they're making s'mores and individual pizzas for everyone. I didn't even bring a towel. Just some water. They packed for a trip down the Amazon River. I tried not to forget my water.

Also, there is a level of bare flesh I have not seen in years. Girls in bikinis. Even younger girls in bikinis (yikes), and acres of skin bared to the sun. Can you tell I've been deprived of all that for a while? Normally I probably wouldn't notice. But it has been a long time. And will probably be even longer until I see it again. Those years are likely gone for me.

Summer. As I write this, it is breathing its last gasp, at least here. And, well, we're all screaming ahead full speed. My personal summer has come and gone, too. But I can partake in God's seasons and enjoy them even though life is sometimes very hard and curiously painful. We all have summer, though it may be short. God provides a season of plenty along with seasons of dearth. It's up to us what we do with all of them.

Just as the seasons quickly pass, the things we are concerned with pass, too, and like sand through our fingers. My time to pass is drawing closer. I will praise God in each remaining day because He created both me and them. And the changing seasons.

I hope all of you enjoyed your summer or are enjoying what is left of it. And I hope you all have many more.

Thank you for reading. And God bless.