Summers’ Gone By

Fim: The Early Years

I think regardless of the sometimes cloying heat, and dog day afternoons, Summer is still my favorite season. I was born in Spring, and I adore  the turning of the wheel during that time, but here, in the North Country, it does not arrive for two months hence, and I spend too much time looking out the window wishing for the Green Ones to grace the land once again.

But when summer arrives, it is, indeed, already here, full of lush hues that color my world a delicious Green with bushes and trees fully in bloom, and fruit near to bursting, where tomatoes never taste better, and gardens are giving forth sustenance of every kind.

I remember the summers of yesteryear. When I was just a wee one, my parents would head upstate to the Catskills, and rent a bungalow, the earlier ones a stones throw from a lake, where sitting in row boats, we’d wander through the berry patches, picking the succulant fruit, filling our containers with it. As I grew in my formidable years, we’d moved on to bigger colonies, where we’d go down daily to the beach on a lake, and splash around in the water for the afternoon. Perhaps a year or two later, we were in yet another cluster of cottages, this time right on the lake, with a pier, and a row boat tied to it, and swimming, and walking and basking in the sun was still a daily routine.

In the summer, when I was just nine years old, my parents were bitten by the camping bug, and we’d stay, camped in a world of forests, with trails that went on forever, right outside our tent.

Fim: The Rebellious Years

Nothing stays the same. It’s not something man made. It’s Nature’s Way and we begin to become our own person, to decide to spend our time as we wish, and leave the fold.

Summers became a hazy, lazy, daze, where I mingled in gatherings, with music in the air, and everyone wore flowers in their hair. We found love, sometimes as simple as splendor in the grass, and our trips were more often inner journeys, where psychadelic colors swirled around us, as we rode along in our mini bus. Life couldn’t be better. We were together, and what did it matter, if our clothes were a tatter.  And as the song went, ‘those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…’

Fim: The Quiet Years

In my twenties, I was at University. My fondest memory was hanging out at the student union, exploring the philosophical realms with friends. I felt I could have spent the rest of my life, just sharing thoughts about all manner of things. I was no longer tribal, but, rather, beginning to walk a solitary path. My search was often ambiguous, but it suited me. Life was standing at crossroads, considering which way to go, and on some subconscious level, I might have known it didn’t matter, because no matter where you go, there you are! Plus, everything happens at the rate at which it happens; no faster, no slower. You get there, and then you move on.

Among other things, I was looking for love, though it was more, in all the wrong places, than not. And that was okay too. Because everything changes. The road took me out, and the road brought me back. I was finding myself. These years were filled with remnants of a past, and the promise of a still unknown future.

But I found a greater silence, soft in it’s embrace, calling me back when I would wander off on an aimless tangent. It was rather like goldfishing it; swiming out, floating back, being a leaf driven by the wind. I found I enjoyed solitude, where I could read, and think, and write, and allow myself to imagine things just beyond my reach.

My summers were spent in private retreat, even while within a dwelling where others sought similar interludes. My guides were the ‘birds and the bees, and the flowers, and the trees, and the moon up above, and a thing called love.’ Yet this love, was of a different kind, that flowed out into the Universe. It wasn’t singular, nor was it physical. It was global.

Fim: The Years of Definition

There is always a certain point where you know it’s time to really start paying attention.  I wasn’t quite there in my 30s. I still had wild – what ever it is women sow – and tried my hand at all manner of interesting almost careers. As I was reaching my 40s, there was a major transition from city living to dwelling in the more rural upstate New York. I’d been up here a few times, on those solitary retreats, and even continued some of my vacations in that vain after our move. But I was not apparently done with my lessons to learn. And we all know, that actually continues through out until our elder days grow dim.

So struggling with inner demons, I still managed to find my way toward a greater definition of my Earthwalk. There is a book which I think speaks greatly about the stuff of which I am made: “I Can Do Anything, If I Only Knew What It Was.”  Instead of taking that as a sign that maybe, just maybe, I should accept I’m nomadic, and pretty much find where I’m needed, I tried to find out that ‘what it was’ part. But a lot of  what I wanted to be, and what I actually was, but refused to see it, turned out to be inner work. My career was inventing myself, but I did have to find those Of Like Mind, in order to get that point.

Summers during that time were spent in learning about being part of Community. It was preparing me for being part of my own family; to become that half which when combined with Mr. Quantum, created a WHOLE. A whole lot of, I am still learning. It never stops.

The Summer of my life, was transitioning toward the Autumn of my life, while I was doing my ‘mating’ dance, not so much for the purpose of bring progeny into the world, but for helping me understand just how the circle of life works, and wends its way ever onward.

This summer, we’re taking a vacation. The last, which was our first as a couple, was  17 years ago, in an historic town in Eastern Texas. Jefferson is a place that I highly suggest anyone historically interested in how the west was one step away from remaining ever in the past, visit this quaint little place where steamboats came to port, and refused to allow the big metal horse in, to bring it roaring into centuries later.

Now summers will become, taking leisurely sojourns that will give us time out of time.

Happy Summer Solstice to all, and may yours bring you joy and abundance, as you harvest your own bounty.