Summer is a vague subject in my brain. What makes a summer day so great? What separates a summer day from a hot, sticky August day? Is it the freedom of doing exactly what you want to do? Is it spontaneity? Is it sacrificing boredom for the feeling of freedom, no matter how brief it may feel? Summer is the freedom to do exactly what you want to do in the moment you want to do it. For Example:
I will describe the adventure that occurred on today's perfect summer day. Gathering friends together to celebrate the fact that we all live and enjoy the time we spend living was only the beginning. Wearing my red, "Beef: it's what's for dinner" hat. Arriving at an unrippled pond. (Unrippled ain't a word I guess) Not another soul. We had the water to ourselves, aside from the geese. The water, the rope swing, and the dock were all ours. Everything made for perfection that couldn't be ruined, even an hour later when other people started to show up, having discovered our secret.
This is a place known for summer fun though nobody understands fully. Sure, the feeling is great as your bare feet leave the low limbs of the old tree as you skim across the surface, but this isn't the only thing that makes it great. The great feeling is doing it over and over and over again, laughing the whole time. Laughing because we've forgotten what we were so worried about hours before. Laughing because we like this feeling of forgetting.
Summer is forgetting.
Of course, summer is not just about forgetting everything. As a student, we forget school. As an adult we take a moment/hour/day/week to forget about the day-to-day struggles. It is forgetting the worry we feel and remembering the friends we have and the things we crave all through the year. Running barefoot to catch a baseball or frisbee. Swimming in a lake or river. Climbing, hiking, running, and wishing to fly for miles. Things that can't be replicated when the cold weather reappears. The friendship we have and develop is the most important thing that we can concentrate on during these months. Nobody ever had proper fun hiking a mountain by themselves. "The Sandlot" would be an extremely dull movie had there only been one kid on the baseball field. The people we associate with during the summer months are generally the friends that we stick with in hard situations during the rest of the year.
There are too many things that help make a hot summer day into the magic that is necessary for an unforgettable adventure. Too many things to really pin down. The people we do an activity with are the major decider of what makes for the best summers. The kind of day that will be imprinted in the ripples of your mind for decades.
The hardest part about a summer is the end. Unfortunately as I write this I am beginning to realize exactly how numbered our summer days are. School starts in two weeks, one of the best kids I know is moving down to St. George for school tomorrow, and the good byes have been flying around. Good byes suck pretty bad, but it is a regular summer festivity. There has never been a summer without a few farewells along the way. Pieces of us going in all sorts of weird directions with our friends. The seemingly perfect days only memories.
Though you could argue that there is no such thing as a perfect day, I feel that we may have abridged memories, to make them appear as such. So hopefully as the summer days get shorter, and the fall countdown begins; as we part ways and focus on new goals and ambitions, the memories of these summer days stay perfect in our minds.
(So let the record show I have an awesome friend who can be pretty eloquent when he needs to be. Barely a blogger himself and he even included a picture! I'm so proud.)
And no post would be complete without mentioning the last YouTube video I watched: Bow Ties Are Cool - Alex Carpenter (Doctor Who apparently comes back September 1st, which is excellent news. I'm stoked.)
