Oh, July. Now that the seventh month has pounced, the heat feels more in place. June had no business being so hot. I say this with an air of humor, but my last thoughts before going to sleep last night were of dread and angst about the planet.
I’m enrolled in the Alabama Master Naturalist certification program. Yesterday, in the chill and quiet of the air-conditioned public library, I completed the module on weather and climate. I learned that for reasons ranging from our lush forests, abundant rivers, and proximity to the Gulf, Alabama stands to see fewer extreme effects of climate change than some other areas.
But the whole wide world can’t come to Alabama, so the angst remains.
In my teenager years, I had a darling Tennessee Walking Horse named Spade, barely tall enough to escape being a pony, who carried me through insecurity, bad boyfriends, girl drama, and all the trappings of self-doubt defining teenage girls (boys too, I suppose). Unsure if I was a hippie or a preppie, a cynic or a poet, I was who I was on that horse, and spent 12-hour days on his back, in the woods, looking at rocks and trees and basking in the freedom of galloping in cow pastures.
I rode year round. Winters were cold, and I’d take breaks and go into the old farm house for hot chocolate, warming my rear end on the gas heater by the door. Summers were hot, and Spade and I would swim in the pond when the summer sun rose high.
Nowadays, we forgo riding if the temperature plus relative humidity is 150 or over. With the inverse relationship between these two, that makes even mornings and evening problematic. Looking over my notes, I don’t think I rode a day last August. This summer is looking ridiculously hot, with the last week of June soaring and persisting in the high 90s.
Still, I’ve managed a few wonderful rides with Chanoah and our friend Laura at the end of the day, and a few morning rides on my own.
Really, aren’t mornings and evenings the best anyway? Sunrise, sunset; dawning, gloaming. Long shadows creeping, songbirds or cicadas emerging, angled sun spackling pinks and purples in the clouds, expectations of a day or a night just in our side view?
Jasper continues his silly behavior, spooking at nothing, loping like a rocket, but I am getting better at predicting, handling, and mitigating such nonsense. Even though I ride him frequently, he’s still on the training schedule. When Chanoah rode him this week she said she could tell I was improving based on his behavior. I aspire to that kind of knowing, sensing.
I learned something else in the Weather and Climate module. During the 60s and 70s, which was my childhood, there was an unexpected and unexplained cooler period in Alabama, giving credence to my memories of chilly Octobers and hot but manageable rides in the summer.
2023 was the hottest year on record on planet Earth. July 2023 was the hottest month. What will July 2024 bring?
JOURNEY IN PLACE
I break from Janisse Ray’s yearlong coursework to share with you some delightful bits I’ve jotted in my notebook while reading A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold, required reading for my Alabama Master Naturalist course. I’m only on page 38, and look forward to fattening my collection.
Quotes
“Man brings all things to the test of himself.”
“What a dull world if we knew all about geese!”
“Like the whitethroats, I had forgotten it would ever again be aught but morning on the fork.”
“It’s not often that cold-potato mathematics thus confirms the sentimental promptings of a bird-lover.”
Words
tramps (v)
fancy (v)
garner (v)
filch (v)
laved (v, past tense)
creel (n)
winnowing (n)
tussock (n)
roil (n)
rompings and retributions (nouns)
Phrases
He described a mouse as a “sober citizen.”
“tufts of rabbit hair bespeak…”
“oak now aglow on my andirons”
“corn seedlings drowned at birth on a prairie sea”
“honk from a clamorous invitation,” from a goose no doubt
AND YOU?
Heard any good words or phrases to share? How are you keeping cool where you are?
Thanks for the comment on Aldo Leopold, one of my favorites. I keep cool by living in a building built into the side of a ridge. It's only hot when I go outside. I also work as a part-time tour guide in a commercial cave where it is 60 degrees year-round.
Creel - a small basket fly fishermen used to store the day’s catch. The had a shoulder strap for carrying them.