High Summer

It is the third week in July. This is high summer: hot days, endless blue sky, green everywhere and fruit coming to season.

In Five Element Chinese medicine, this is the season of Fire.

I learned about this during my time in Plant Spirit Medicine study. This is the season where all plants are pumping in sunshine, and pumping out fruits, seeds and nuts. This is the season where all animals (humans included) need to be taking in the richness of the season, recharging our batteries, and laying down stores for the foodless seasons to come.

I thought of all these things this morning, when I made my yearly pilgrimage to Johnson's Organic Berry Farm off Wiggins road in Thurston county. This morning was still cool, the maritime flow of air coming off the Pacific ocean making the day tolerable. I drove past green fields and deep woods, full of green plants in the prime summer of their lives, soaking in sun from the sky, and their roots deep in the ground, bringing in moisture and dissolved minerals. This is the green time of year.

This is the season where I make a plan to lie down between the strawberry bushes full of ripe fruit, letting the sun warm me up and reaching over lazily to pick a big fat red one and stuff it in my mouth, warm juices trickling down my chin. In this plan there are strawberries and sun forever, and the earth holds me in her cool arms while I feast in summer.

This is the season where we go to bed late, and lie in the cold wash of the fan, trying to get cool enough to sleep. This was how it was for us the other night, lying there at 1:30 am, until Glen made a funny remark, and we started laughing insanely, howling like hyenas for a good ten minutes until we finally hiccuped our way into sleep. This is the season of summer.

In the garden, this is the season where the Yellow-faced Bumblebee finds the pumpkin flowers and spends long hours stuffed deep into the flowers, collecting pollen and nectar for her brood sisters. This is the season where the Hazelnut bush starts pushing out big green nuts; Glen and I strategize each year about ways to protect these nuts so we get a chance to eat them before the jays and the squirrels do. Then there are the creamy cornucopia of lilies in bloom, drinking in the fullness of the light. These are the flowers, the fruits, the nuts of this season.

In this season, everything is green, full of promise, not yet fulfilled. Soon it will turn to Indian summer: the season where everything turns golden and the ocean sends us gray misty mornings.

In my life, I have come to learn that the changes of season occur like a tide, changing in a matter of hours from high tide, to slack tide and then to the long pulling out of the season, until the next year. I saw it happen one summer many years ago, and I have never forgotten it.

My sister and I had gone to a laundromat (now defunct) on the west side of Olympia, overlooking the bay and Mount Rainier. We took several loads of laundry there around noon; in between loads we sat outside and looked out on the bay, enjoying the sun and heat of the day.

When we arrived, the day was full of green promise, the sky summer-blue, and a sunlit blue tide surging south down Budd inlet, filling the estuary with a summer full tide.
As the day progressed, the feel of the day changed: the sun dropped farther south, and the summer-blue sky took on a hint of darker Prussian blue- the color of fall. The heat drained from the day, and the tide, once full, now started pulling strongly north, draining out the summer and the green days of endless sun.
When we arrived, we knew we were in full summer, feeling summer like an incoming tide, filling up all our senses. As the afternoon went on, we saw the tide turn: summer turned away from us, heading south, and I felt it in the marrow of my bones.
The next morning we woke to gray skies and rain. Summer was in retreat.

Janet Partlow