Marking time

Unless you're a Druid the summer solstice probably passes without fanfare. Most people are looking toward July 4th or simply trying to survive an early heat wave and the point in time (12:38pm Eastern Daylight today, for those keeping score) when the North Pole hits maximum tilt toward the Sun is also known as lunchtime, something far more critical to personal well-being.

Hungry or not, the solstice is mostly just another minute in another day in another month that people rush through on their way to the next minute. Mostly. Scattered across the globe, without organized celebration, a handful of us do feel the subtle shift in planetary axis. Days getting shorter, seasons getting closer.

This photo was taken on December 21st of last year, just before the North Pole began its crawl toward the sun. This pond lies at the bottom of a field that usually holds some late season birds, but not always. It's not too far away now.

Blogs are heat-sensitive

It's a pattern that repeats with the season.  Summer rolls around and blog activity grows more and more lethargic and it's not just the hunting blogs either.  Quite a few from the fishing world slow to a crawl, beaten into submission by the heat and humidity.  Bless those few who diligently post several times a week lest I abandon the web as entertainment altogether.

It's not so much a lack of anything to say as it is a lack of motivation to say it. I don't know why it is that apathy, the bermudagrass of activity, grows so well in warmer temps, stretching and creeping and slowly covering nearly everything if left to its own. Words struggle to find the light of day.

Doesn't make much sense to blame it on the heat, either. When it gets too hot outside and we take refuge in the A/C there's only so much to do. Opportunity knocks and we pretend we're not home.

If there weren't bad seasons there wouldn't be good ones.

The days are getting shorter

It's barely noticeable unless you're keeping score, a mere technicality yielding no practicality.  With fully two thirds of the working summer remaining and essentially all of the really hot days still to come only an optimist or a drooling fool would see any sign of autumn in this event.  I've rarely been labeled an optimist.

It's not that I loathe summer.  Swimming with the kids, a hammock I'm pretty fond of, bare feet, no jackets, fresh everything, humidity, mosquitoes, periodic drought, oppressive heat waves.  Yeah.

There are lots of things that I do loathe: spoiled grownups, a leaking roof, a checking account determined to achieve the value of zero, politics in general, Kanye West, reflux.......ok, enough whining.  It's one of the curious conditions of human existence that such nuisances are easily displaced by the hope of something better down the road, doesn't have to be bird season, anything more appetizing than the irritant at hand will do.  And hope comes in the form of even the tiniest reminder.

In the same way I'm forced to admit on December 21st that the best time of the year is ending I allow myself the brief but savory pleasure of knowing that fall and its vices are getting closer.  Not in a hurry, though, just right on schedule.