Chilled Summer Nights

I was never really one for the hot summer days. I don't like to sweat, and I don't like the sun in my eyes or the glare reflecting off everything. Summer just always seemed to harsh for me with its extremes.

However, I do love summer rain.

A rainy summer day makes for some of the best weather. The air chills, and smells earthy and clean at the same time. Those fancy room candles can never get it right. It's the smell of wet and green like the sprinkler days from childhood when you sail through the grass on your slip and slide speeding like a bullet until you run out of plastic and skip across the yard coloring knees and elbows green. If you're lucky the cloud cover will last all day, a canopy keeping out the sun and letting in an ambient light as if someone turned down the dimmer switch for the world to set the mood. Even before the lightening there is a charge in the air makes the hairs on your arms stand at attention. The colors seem to grow brighter without the sun's competition and everything that grows green stands a little taller, feeding off the storm's energy. If the clouds and wet continue into the night a haze might gather in the dips and lows of the land, meeting in the pooling light of streets lamps like lovers in black and white films. Everything feels damp, including you, and the breeze gives you goosebumps. Walking in summer nights, breathing in the thick atmosphere, feeling your clammy skin, can bring back those childhood memories of staying up past your bed time to play one last game of capture the flag or cops and robbers; the excitement of seeing the neighborhood through the filter of night that distorts the world like water distorts the sun across the ocean floor. The friendly day time street becomes a little sinister with deep shadows that hide all sorts of creatures from any child's imagination. The world at night, both frightening and exhilarating and that tingle up the spine cold be the wind or the creeps.

Even as an adult, walking around my neighborhood on rainy summer nights, my heart beats a little faster with excitement and nostalgia; the air seems thick not just with humidity but with possibility, and I remember how important it is to live life with that kind of wonder. To have to question whether my goosebumps were caused by a chill in the wind or by my own excitement and giddy anticipation for what the night holds. Nights like this one help to wash away some of my cynicism that seems to build up with living in the day to day world of adulthood. It makes my spider senses tingle and my arm hairs stand on end and puts a smile on my face. It revives my imagination and reminds me why I chase the stories in my head and continue in the pain process of trying to write and share them with the world. Rainy days seem to be my muse, and I revel in them as much as everyone else seems to revel in the sunny summer.