Ludicrous Speed

The mornings are cool now. Even if the days get hot, it’s seemingly only for a moment. We hit a little peak, and for a second I think, “Up, it got there…just barely! But it got there.” And then a moment later, it’s not hot anymore. Maybe it’ll ping against that temperature ceiling a few times during the day, but it’s not taking long in this mid-September for the low sun to lose enough angle to not torture us any longer. And then I think “Whew, that’s just about it. The heat, the moving water everywhere, the biting flies and ticks, the…stress. It’s all losing it’s angle with the sun”.

I hate to think that the sun is the source of any torture, but at times and in places, it is. I realize often that it’s the only thing that renders me happy. I know that in the middle of winter, when the clouds haven’t cleared in ages, and the sun finally shines though, I think “This is all I need”. But at the end of summer, and I am glad to see it lose it’s reign. It isn’t so much that it tortures us, or me anyway. But it makes things move. It makes things move fast, and we torture ourselves trying to keep up.

And a farm has pace to be kept. At times, it’s a ludicrous speed. It’s a pace that frankly can’t be kept. If summer went on indefinitely, I would not. If the sun kept an angle all year that kept the movement of nature frenetic for more than 4 months, I would retire myself to some patch of earth and watch it all happen. I wouldn’t try. I’d be covered in moss wondering, “why would I even attempt such a thing?”

I suppose here in the North, we try to concentrate and distill summer by keeping pace with it. We only have it for so long, which is not long at all. We try to run along side it, push it even, in the end knowing that we can stop, because it will stop.

In the North, we are sprinters.

The 10 Day says that summer and the sun will be making a brief but powerful comeback, if only for a few days. And then? With each passing day, a comeback will be less likely. But…not impossible.

Either way, fellow sprinters, just remember: You can’t just stop. You have to slow down first.