Season Salty

What is it about summer that makes me feel discomfited and out of my element? The uncompromising angle of the sun, the heat—while sometimes unpleasant—aren’t what bothers me most. It’s the gusty summer winds that signal fire danger, setting me on edge and sniffing at the air like a canine for the first hint of smoke.

This is the same wind that stirs static electricity, building unseen until you touch a metal doorframe or reach out to pet a cat and the sudden “snap” takes you aback, the shock leaving you feeling betrayed and unsettled.

Though recently, a dear friend said something about wind that invited me to think of it a bit differently. She was talking about how the wind refreshes. It blows things out, clears away, and brings new things in. It takes and gives.

This is, of course, true. The summer breeze is freshening and cooling. It makes a lovely sound in the trees. It pushes sailboats across the bay. It lifts kites into the blue sky as we play with the wind, a dance between human and more than human, connected by a string.

Were I to befriend the summer wind, what might I ask it to bear away from me? Anything that feels stale or done? An old husk of an idea, a scent of a way of thinking or behaving that no longer serves me? What would I thank it to bring to me, to refresh, or turn to play?

Though summer is still an unsettling season, and its winds may never fail to set me on edge, I realize too that stuff happens at the edges of things. Maybe being “on edge” can mean nearing the brink of something good, rather than impending disaster. What if feeling on edge is about staying open to thinking in new ways about myself and the world? What if the summer wind isn’t setting me up, but setting me on a new path, stirring my energy so that I can do something that I might not have been on edge enough to do before?