GRAFTON — Yes! Summer!
Friends and neighbors come to celebrate the solstice and climb the stairs up to the barn porch, carrying roast leg of lamb, roasted potatoes, black rice salad, lime cheesecake, beet salad, strawberry-mint tea, homemade rye bread, and more: enough deliciousness to feed 20 people.
I am convinced that there are more great cooks per capita in Vermont than in any other state.
Yes to great cooks and neighborly communion and the privilege of earth's bounty.
Yes to the kids who were game to try all the food on the menu and said “thank you” and “please” and after dinner raced through the field playing hide-and-seek, their laughter providing sweet music that echoes through the wetlands.
Yes to Vermont's tenacious farmers and gardeners and the scents of lemon balm and lavender and the taste of heirloom tomatoes fresh from the vine and tall stalks of feathery dill swaying in a breeze and blueberries and raspberries and watermelons and basil and peaches ripening on their trees and corn on the cob and, yes, even to zucchini.
Yes to sublime coffee ice cream from the Walpole Creamery.
Yes to heat and light and color and blooming things.
* * *
No milestone on the calendar challenges me to “be here now” more than the summer solstice.
Solstice. From the Latin. Meaning literally “sun stands still.”
The longest day of the year. Even as I celebrate it, I circle the swirling drain of melancholy. Tomorrow will be a shorter day.
William Blake wrote the ultimate antidote to melancholy.
He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
lives in eternity's sunrise.
“Winged life.” Plenty of it here in the summer.
Two couples of robins have built nests in the eves of the barn porch. They are perpetually busy feeding their chicks. When I sit in the rocking chair, book in hand, taking a 20-minute vacation, they scold me for my intrusion.
Six wild turkeys rise straight up from the tall meadow grass like nature's helicopters.
Crows caw in the pines and then take flight, feathers gleaming in the sun.
Barn swallows - 40 or more - perform an aerial ballet and fill the sky with wings.
Bees flit in fields of red and white clover.
Dragonflies soar at day's end.
Fireflies twinkle.
* * *
Yes to stargazing.
Yes to sleeping with all the windows wide open and the caress of the soft night air.
Yes to leaping out of bed in the dark morning and not having to reach for layers of clothes and fleece slippers.
Yes to bare feet!
In the pond, bullfrogs are singing the song they began at dusk.
Just as the sun comes up, a resident doe moseys past the barn with her twin fawns bounding in front of her.
Yes! Wild strawberries, black-eyed Susans, scent of new-mown hay.
Box turtles sunning by the kitchen door.
Garter snakes keeping company with the turtles.
A young fox moves silently through the field, hunting mice.
Slinky red efts and wood frogs travel the same path under canopy of pines.
Yes to the quiet whirr of ceiling fans in the heat of the day and yes to striped sun glinting through bamboo shades, all the rooms in the house taking on sepia tones, gauzy like a dream.
* * *
Suddenly, it's July. How many heartbeats, how many breaths between June 20th, when the sun stood still, and now?
Already, dawn arrives later. At 4 a.m., it is still dark. A waning moon and a few stars in a cloudy sky provide the only illumination.
As I walk the winding path to the barn, I'm circling that drain again. No matter how cold or snowy the longest night of the year might be, it's easy to celebrate the winter solstice because it signals the return of the light.
Now I hear Keith Richards singing that most sad and beautiful song “Slipping Away.” His mournful voice threatens to drown out the exuberant song of the bullfrogs.
Here comes just another day
That's drifting away
Every time I draw a breath
It's dying away
First the sun and then the moon
One of them will be around soon
Slipping away
Slipping away
* * *
Impermanence. It's the nature of life.
Everywhere I go - the feed store, the library, the dairy, the post office - people herald summer and lament its brevity: “Kiss the joy as it flies.”
Yes to their voices, reminding me.
Only once did I meet a Vermonter who railed against summer.
“I hate the sun!” she declared, with enough vehemence to produce her own personal nuclear meltdown.
I think I gasped. Her words sounded blasphemous. How can anyone hate the sun, giver of light and life?
In that moment, I realized I have something in common with religious zealots. I love the sun, but the glare of self-revelation is not flattering.
* * *
A July evening at sunset. A patch of daylilies blooms by the northwest side of the barn. The sinking sun shines on them, literally gilding them. They appear iridescent, radiating a golden glow, gold that can't be owned or hoarded.
I'm dazzled by brilliance. Forget the breath that is “dying away.” Breathe in beauty.
It's still summer. Yes!