Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I stole the title of this posting from him. Granted it is only April 23rd and in the rest of the country it is not quite summertime. Yet here, in Phoenix, it feels like it. The mist is on at Casey Moores and all along the street the students in Tempe are sailing down the sidewalks in the shortest the shorts, the whitest of white tee shirts, on beach cruisers ranging in all colors of the rainbow, and of course the afternoon is a blazing 103 degrees. It will cool off again. These are just a few early days reminding us how brutal the desert summer can be here. In the high desert the cacti have not begun to bloom yet. When they do the Sonoran Desert will be a sea of neutrals speckled with white and pink and green and yellow. The ocotillo plants are red though and in the city the planted peonies and roses are in full flourish. Everything here is showing its colors. Even my skin, which has been light pink for as long as I can remember is finally turning brown, despite my attempts at frosting myself with sunblock with every given chance.
And there is baseball. To be honest, my summer has always begun when those boys take to the field. Play ball.
With the beginning of the season comes too the beginning of fieldwork season for contract archaeologists, shovelbums to be more precise. And just like clockwork, the moment the thermometer hit 100 I was contacted to begin work. This time to begin in New Mexico. I have not been my usual gypsy self for nearly a near now. I have missed the feel of dirt in my socks, of the futility of wearing nail polish and lipgloss. In respect to what I have spent my last year doing, that too was completely fulfilling. But what we are we must accept and embrace and love, and I am...and always will be...a duckman. No wait, that's Ducky from Pretty In Pink. I meant an archaeologist. Yes.
I would not have been offered such a chance to return to work in such a beautiful and romantic area had I not had doors been opened to me by the family I have been working for. As a nanny for this family I have been able to come home, to find my heart again, to explore all that I am capable of, and to pursue such occupations as a desert jeep tour guide. I owe them more than they will ever know.
National Geographic eat your heart out.
Even as a girl summer was something special. Summers in the suburbs of Cincinnati meant Friday night concerts on the town square. I am sure I snuck out to meet boys more times than was healthy for an inexperienced girl of my age. Summer meant a new year, new friends, time away from the tumultousness of school (where, yes, even I know I was such a super geek). Summer was a time to grow, to travel and fall in love with other young people who we would never see again. Summer was built of long days and short nights, as if the season itself was telling us 'get up! wake up! this will not last forever!'. I never slept much. In high school I fell in love during the summer going into my freshman year. Well, at least as much as one can love at fourteen. He has a lovely family now and work in politics in Cincinnati. Summer was girlfriends painting each others nails at the community pool, of music, of dancing in the rain. I look back on it now and realize that even then, taking a cue from My So Called Life, I knew it was something special.
Perhaps we lose some of that when we get older. We lose that ability to feel the heat settling into our skin as we find ourselves embarking on new adventures. Perhaps we forget how wonderful it is to see the sun rise and prepare ourselves for whatever the new, long, hot, humid day has in its plan.
Ah, but here I sit. Thirty one years old and so full of excitement I can barely sit still. Summer. Bright, brilliant, long, hot, summer. I think I am ready, severity and all.
