I’ve always had a tenuous relationship with the brightest and warmest season of the year.  Even as a child growing up in southeast Michigan, I did not like summer due to the frequently warm, sticky weather that comes with living by the Great Lakes, which function as freshwater oceans.  Fall and winter were always my favorite seasons, which I looked forward to every year.

Then we moved to Texas in 1981 when I was nine, and my dislike of summer turned to dread and hatred.  We had moved to the southeastern coastal part of the state, where it wasn’t uncommon for a July day to be 95F with 95% humidity.  In the words of a recent Reddit commenter, you opened the door each day to a blast of “heat, humidity, and hate”.  Mother Nature literally punched you in the face when you left the house in the daytime.  I became accustomed to the sensation of taking a shower, drying off, and almost immediately being wet again from sweating.

Fate favored me in 1991 when my boyfriend and I found ourselves unemployed and seeking a fresh start.  He had friends in Central Texas, and we bailed on the Texas Coast.  The weather there was much drier, so even though it was still hot, it wasn’t as oppressive.  Still, life without air conditioning was rough.  However, 95F at 30% humidity was a lot easier to deal with than the same at 95% humidity, so it was a huge improvement.

I grew to tolerate summer in Central Texas, which got even easier when I lost a great deal of weight in my early 20s, so I wasn’t so heavily insulated.  I even grew to enjoy the heat in my thinner days, though once the temperature sailed into the mid-90s, I had to stop wearing my black combat boots or my feet would cook.  It wasn’t a season in which I wanted to do a lot of outdoor activity, but I no longer detested summer.

Then climate change began to affect Central Texas weather.  Strange heat spikes sometimes hit the state in late winter and early spring, disrupting the natural rhythms of the plants and animals.  Average summer temperatures began to climb and set in earlier each year.  I experienced the hottest day in Austin history (at that time) in 2001 when the official temperature hit 114F in early September.  Then it happened again a few years later.  And again.  And again.

In 2011, a particularly bad drought and heat wave struck the state, turning it into a tinderbox.  The thermometer on my back porch routinely soared to over 110F, sometimes as high as 115F, and the sky was brown with smoke from brush fires.  My husband and I swore that year that we would never endure another heat wave like that and began to make plans to move to the Pacific Northwest, a place we had visited in 1999 and adored.

Over the next 11 years, it just got hotter in Central Texas.  Spring and fall got shorter and shorter while summer got longer and longer, and hotter.  I suffered from reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder because I never went outdoors in the summertime, so I was suffering from a lack of light despite it being the brightest season of the year.  This also gave me a case of cabin fever, which didn’t help my mental health any, either.

Our final year in Austin, fall did not begin until the end of November.  Until then, temperatures in the mid-to-upper 80s persisted, accompanied by unusual humidity.  However, we were deep into our plans to move as our lease was ending the following spring.  There was little to nothing holding us to where we were, and if we were going to live somewhere expensive, we at least wanted to enjoy it.

So at long last, we made the jump from Texas to the Pacific Northwest in April 2022.  We left a state that was already warming up for the year and landed in a place that was still cool and wet.  It was glorious, and we spent our first two months sitting on the back porch watching it rain and marveling at the cool temperatures, our bodies confused because the calendar told them they should be sweltering by then.

Summer made its entrance on June 20 with the most perfect day imaginable: 72F, a slight breeze, and the clearest blue sunny sky we had ever seen.  We actually got outside and did things that year, though we had to convince ourselves to do so because we simply weren’t in the habit of going outside in the summertime.  It was reflexive to tell ourselves “no, it’s too hot”, and it took time to learn that all we needed was a light-colored shirt, a hat, and some sunglasses to enjoy time outdoors again.

Not that the seasonal vagaries of climate change did not also rear their head in our new home.  During our first summer, on more than one occasion the temperatures soared to over 100F, even as high as 110F at our location closer to the Cascade Foothills.  I was grateful that I had managed to rent a newer house built with air conditioning.  These hot spells were short-lived, though, usually lasting only a few days before the temperatures fell back into the 80s or even the 70s, unlike back in Texas where once it reached the 90s each year, it stayed there (or above) until Autumn.

I am still growing accustomed to living somewhere that it is reasonable to do outdoor activities in the morning all summer long, unlike where we were living.  In Texas, after about May, there simply is no pleasant time of day to do anything, not even early morning when temperatures are the lowest and the Sun hasn’t risen yet.  The humidity is high and the temperature may be as high as 80F or more at dawn, so even if the sunlight doesn’t hit you, you’re sweltering even if you’re simply taking a walk.

Perhaps this is simply how I experienced Texas as a person who is, genetically speaking, largely comprised of people from Northwest Europe and the British Isles, which climatologically speaking is much closer to where I live now than I was in Texas.  I’m sure there are people living there who find the weather to be perfectly pleasant, but I was not one of them.

I am much happier living in the Northwest than I ever was in Texas.  It’s said that you can’t move away from your problems, that “wherever you go, there you are”, and that’s true, but if the place that you are living is itself contributing problems to your life that can be solved by relocating, I think everyone should pursue that course of action if it’s available to them.  I did not realize how oppressive it was to live somewhere that I did not feel free to leave the house until I went somewhere that actually allowed me to enjoy the outdoors.

Now I am learning to appreciate summer rather than hide from it.  Gardening used to be something that was abandoned once the temperature got too high.  Plant tags that said “full sun” could not be obeyed lest they fry.  Now gardening is a year-long hobby that always has something to offer, and for the most part, the Sun isn’t trying to kill my plants.  During hot spells, I can cover my plants with shade cloth or simply move them into the shade until the temperature drops.

As a budding Druid, I’m trying to get more in touch with the natural cycles of this new land that I live in, which includes paying attention to what grows when.  I noticed most people referred to the June Full Moon as the Strawberry Moon, since that’s when the strawberry plants are fruiting.  July seems to be the Blueberry Moon, while August is the Blackberry Moon, and the Harvest Moon of September brings apples and pears.  I adore living in this abundant, fertile place where something is always growing instead of wilting beneath the rays of the hot Sun.

Summer does have its drawbacks here, though.  People have this misperception of the Northwest as being a place where it always rains, and during particular times of the year, this is true.  However, Summer is definitely not one of those times.  It’s the dry season, which means Fire Season.  Every July, August, and September, the eyes of Northwesterners turn to the Forest watchfully.  We use weather apps to watch smoke movement and read daily bulletins put out by firefighting crews.  We monitor forest fires the way Atlantic and Gulf coastal residents monitor hurricanes, except we may have to monitor a fire for months, not a week.

We were baptized into Fire Season our very first year, with what became an over 100,000 acre fire a mere 30 miles down the highway, a blaze set by lightning.  The sky darkened and turned a brownish-red, and the Sun set each night in a blazing red.  Whitish-gray ash fell from the sky, which we were told not to wash off with water or it would burn what it touched.  One night while sitting on the porch, sudden gusts of hot, perfumed wind began to blow from the direction of the fire, filling me with alarm.  I was struck with the impression of the world’s largest and most dangerous campfire burning somewhere nearby.

We learned that forest fires are not extinguished: they are contained and allowed to burn out.  They’re simply too large and too hot to actually put out: all you can do is try to prevent them from spreading until it starts to rain again.  We also learned that 82% of forest fires are manmade, a statistic that angers me given the danger and destruction fires each year present.  A fire last year that was also a relatively short distance away, but much smaller (only 35,000 acres), was apparently caused by a smoker at a campsite.  That’s probably the most important thing we’ve learned about forest fires in our time here: it only takes a spark to start one.

While we did not escape the fires of Central Texas that come during particularly hot years, we did escape the heat for the most part.  We vowed to never live through another heat wave like the one in 2011, and it turned out that we left just in time.  The same year that we left Texas, they had another super hot year with a lot of brush fires that was just brutal and seemed neverending.  I felt like I had narrowly escaped a slamming door.

It does still get hot here.  In fact, as I was writing this (July 2024), an excessive heat warning flashed on my weather app for the coming weekend, indicating temps in the upper 90s and low 100s.  I attribute that to climate change, though.  Normally it is perfectly pleasant here, and I know it will go back to pleasant weather once the hot spell is over.  It’s difficult to overcome the power of the Pacific Ocean, laying a mere 60 miles to the West.  It naturally tends to moderate the weather here, giving us our normally mild climate.

It is so nice to live somewhere we can actually get out and do things.  Even during hot spells, it’s possible to drive east into the mountains and get cooler temperatures, or west to the coast and get the same thing.  Hot weather in the Valley often means cool, misty weather on the coast, which is magical to experience.  Simply going out for a scenic drive can make any temporary heat more bearable.

I’m looking forward to continuing to cultivate a healthier relationship with Summer.  Instead of a season of crispy death when every living thing hunkers down for survival, I’m finally seeing it as a season of life, though not one that doesn’t come without dangers.  I realized when I moved here, though, that every single place on Earth comes with its dangers.  Blizzards and avalanches, heat waves and droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes, landslides and floods.  Here it’s forest fires and the odd ice storm, with the ever-lingering threat of a major tsunami-causing earthquake and the Cascade Volcanic Arc, visible on a clear day.

I won’t let these things keep me inside, though.  They merely add to the dynamic nature of this beautiful place and help keep me on my toes in a way that makes me feel more alive.  I feel more connected to the Earth here than I ever did in Texas, which felt energetically foreign to me, as though I never belonged there.  I belong in this place, and it feels more like Home to me than anywhere else I’ve ever been.  I’m enjoying allowing its energy of life to seep into me and erode the years of fear of the outdoors.