Dog Days of Summer

Dog Days bright and clear
Indicate a happy year;
But when accompanied by rain,
For better times, our hopes are vain.

By the time you are reading this, the Dog Days of Summer are over—July 3-August 11 this year, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. The ancient origins refer to the rising of Sirius, the dog star: “When dogs and men alike would be driven mad by the extreme heat.”

In modern times, Dog Days refers to the heavy stretch of late summer when the air feels thick, tempers are short, energy flags.

AI says it’s been warmer than usual in the Pacific Northwest this summer. (However, four of my six volunteer days at Mount Rainier National Park during the Dog Days were foggy and rainy.) On the other hand, overall precipitation in the Lower 48 ranks in the wettest third of the 131-year record. 

In the other Washington, both humidity and rainfall have been high over the past two months. In fact, it’s been one of the most humid summers on record in the District of Columbia. Draw your own connections with the verse above. Personally, I’m struggling to think better times are on the horizon. It feels like end times. A madman is lawlessly running the show. I feel small. It feels like we are all small.

I’m not prone to depression, but last week I felt the heaviness. I was tired. I had a lingering low-grade headache. I didn’t want to do anything. I’m taking a road trip (to Canada) in less than two weeks and I’m anxious rather than excited.

Along with the depression, or perhaps the cause of it, I’m afraid. For the growing number of people being marginalized. For the country. For the world. For the planet. I’m afraid of the new world order technology has created. Alexa. Artificial Intelligence. Social media. So much opportunity to spread lies, create chaos and overwhelm. Remember when Huntley-Brinkley and Walter Cronkite provided unbiased, factual news, the lying stuff confined to tabloids at the grocery store checkout? I miss what felt like simpler times. It probably wasn’t, but it seems so in retrospect.

And with depression and fear come grief and nostalgia. I miss my parents, my young children. I miss caring for young grandchildren. (I guess I can’t call them the Littles anymore, they are nine and eleven, and provide an inescapable sense of the passage of time.) Providing care for them—in infancy and toddlerhood, at now-defunct Camp Gigi, during the pandemic—has been the joyous gift of my third act. (I had time with them last week. Being needed helps!)

I know I’m not alone in feeling increasing nostalgia and grief these days. The piling on of metaphorical heat and humidity, day after day, feels inexhaustible. Dog Days.

But giving in to hopelessness and grief guarantees its endlessness. I appreciated a recent post from Grant Faulkner.

“As we grow older, ‘loss becomes the primary condition of living. That doesn’t mean you’re in a hopeless, grief-stricken state all the time; it just means that you carry a deeper understanding of what it is to be human.’” (Nick Cave, via Grant Faulkner.)

Then came Thursday. I had coffee with a friend. I finally put a wire line around my fledging raspberries so they aren’t falling over—and poking through the deer fence, being snipped off. I watched Governor Newsom’s address and his conversation with Heather Cox Richardson. (If you missed the latter, watch it here, it’s inspiring.) At the close of the conversation, he said to viewers:

“You are the antidote to cynicism and fear . . . don’t give up, express yourself, in a responsible way. . . . You inspire me.” Gov. Gavin Newsom

You inspire me. The energy of the people inspires those who do have a bully pulpit. I hadn’t thought of it that way. So, this is me expressing myself.

The past few days, the end of Dog Days, have been hot here in the NW corner—102 at the fire station on Tuesday—but Friday, as I write this, is forecast to be overcast and damp all day long. Rainy days energize me. A map of the Canadian Rockies arrived Thursday too, and I have a tentative itinerary. (I just need to get more clear on metric measurement, and currency, and there’s a border crossing, and a time change.) This week are my last two scheduled volunteer shifts at Paradise for the year. I don’t enjoy rain there, and the forecast is sun.

Things are looking up.

I’m ready for the end of metaphorical Dog Days. For a cool front—climatically and politically. For less fear and grief. For a return to nostalgia being only wistful longing, not fear and grief.

I’m ready for cozy.

What are you nostalgic for? What do you grieve? How are you neutralizing grief? What feels like hope? Leave a comment on this post on my website, and read what others are saying. (Or reply to this email just for me.)

🌖 🌖 🌖

Thank you to my friend Bonnie Rae for the full moon photo—tripling through the window glass—taken from my home in my absence. You can follow her amazing photography—particularly of birds—at insearchofthevery.com.

Note: I am no longer on FaceBook (one way I’m neutralizing overwhelm), but you can follow me at writingdownthestory.com. Including as I wind my way through five of Canada’s national parks—and the metric system.

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What are you nostalgic for? What do you grieve? How are you neutralizing grief? What feels like hope? Leave a comment!

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