What is your idea of the perfect summer?
It’s June. The days have been growing longer for months, but it was only a few weeks ago you really took notice of how late you were able to be out enjoying the evening. Now it is also warm well into the night. You sleep with the windows open, the crickets and cicadas sing you to sleep. The perfect summer has only just begun.
You have no obligations in this ideal summer. No work, no school, no responsibilities, no worries. Hakuna matata. Until September 1st, you are a bird, free to stretch your wings and fly wherever they may take you. How far will you fly?
You’ve always wanted to see the Midnight Sun. You head north. The Alaskan summer feels more like your beloved early fall. The days warm, but the nights still cool. You spend a couple weeks in a remote village, learning about the culture and the people, and yes, seeing the sky remain light all through the night.
There is still a lot of summer left. You want to spend some of it out on the water. You spend the second half of June learning to surf in the Pacific. When you’re not flailing about in the water, you explore the coast. It’s so much longer than you realized, but you love driving the long scenic routes. Scratch another item off the bucket list.
July rolls in and you think it might be nice to go backpacking in Europe. You spend a week in the UK, a week in France and Germany, a week in Italy, and a week in Spain. You meet all kinds of new and interesting people, eat food you never would have imagined yourself eating, and see the stars from a different part of the world every night. You realize a week is not enough time in any one of these countries, and put return trips to each on your bucket list.
Summer is flying by. You have been so busy, seen so many wondrous sights, but there are things you still wish to do at home, and so you return. You spend a week readjusting your body clock. This is ok, since after all your travels, a vacation from your vacation is warranted. Summer is still time for relaxing, after all. You dig into your TBR pile and whittle it down, book by book. You add the books you bought on your trips to the pile. It remains the same size.
You visit with friends and family. You share stories of your traveling. They share their own summer adventures with you. The sun sets earlier as you sit around a campfire roasting marshmallows. Is it really almost time for the leaves to begin losing their color?
The final week of summer arrives. You want it to last forever and so it rushes to the finish line. You try to get yourself back into a routine in preparation of the morning the spell breaks and your duties come rushing back down on you, but it’s so hard. You lament that summer can’t last forever and you have to return to being a functional adult once more.
The perfect summer must come to an end eventually. You smile, because you still have the fall.
Notes: What a jam-packed summer that would be! If I had the resources and the time (which, is also a resource I guess), I would travel all over. See as much as I can see. Even three months is too short a time to devote to all the places I rattled off in this weird little essay.
Give me good weather, a good book, and good food, I’ll be perfectly content wherever I am. 75/55F would be ideal. Maybe a little rain one afternoon a week. A calming thunderstorm, not one of those boomers that shakes my bones. Yeah, summer is pretty cool.
What about you? Would you spend your summer traveling or would you stay close to home? Maybe get a little writing done or just play some video games. Get caught up on all your favorite shows. Build something! I can’t believe I forgot crafty things in my ideal summer. I suppose I could be doing that in the month I was actually home. Three months really isn’t enough!
Ok, Tuesday’s in the books now. Have a great night! See you tomorrow!
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Closet Full of Notebooks 