Thursday, June 21, 2007

Summer So Far Away

So, today is the first day of summer. It’s the kind of day that makes me wonder why I live here. I remember, before I left Nova Scotia to return here a few years ago, it was near the end of a streak of 40 straight days of sunshine and temps in the thirties—that’s EVERY day beginning in early June. And it was still sunny and warm when I left. Even the winters were warmer and sunnier. And we haven’t seen the sunshine in nearly a week now. A couple of weekends were really nice—just the way summer should be—but you can never take that kind of weather for granted here.

I mean, I do appreciate where we live. Whenever I grouse about the crappy rain, drizzle, fog, and cold some optimistic soul always points out that it could be worse—we could be getting the massive hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, smog alerts, and brush fires like they get in those places with warm weather. Yes, they’re right, although sometimes I’m not so sure that we won’t be getting those things in the next decade or so. But for now, I concede that our weather isn’t that extreme, and that’s something I truly am grateful for.

My wife and I lived in British Columbia about nine years or so ago, though not for very long. We were enticed out there by well-meaning relatives who kept telling us how mild the winters were. Well, on the fifteenth of November that year, we were moving to a new apartment…and it snowed, and snowed, and snowed. 100 centimetres! And I didn’t own snow boots or wool socks. Most snow they’d seen in decades apparently. Then a week later: another 100 centimetres, and twice more around Christmas time their were massive snow storms. They had to close roads and call in the army to get the highways and byways cleared. It took weeks.

I recall one day in late February waking up one morning and seeing the sun shining in through the kitchen window and realizing: it’s the first time I’ve seen the sun since mid-October of the previous year! That’s a mighty long time without even a glimpse of the sun. It had rained continuously whenever it wasn’t snowing, with only a few cloudy, rainless days in between.

The best weather in B.C., besides the hot, muggy weather of August and September (which I absolutely love and wish we could import) was the lightning storms. They were just spectacular. We lived in the Fraser Valley, in a third-floor apartment, so you could not only hear the thunder roaring and rolling from mountain to mountain, but you could also watch the chain lightning get caught in this bowl of rock, just zinging back and forth, lighting up the sky and everything beneath it. I recall standing out on the balcony, overlooking the downtown, the rain pouring down in sheets, and the thunder and lightning like nothing I’d ever seen before. Just incredible. Almost as great as the total lunar eclipse on the night of the full moon in October. Almost as spectacular as the Fundy tides of Nova Scotia that roll in so fast it can take your breath away or the harvest moon setting over the apple orchards in the Annapolis Valley, the sky painted orange, black, and red, like something out of an Old Testament movie.

I guess, when I think of it, it’s the sameness of the weather here that I love and hate at the same time. I like difference, have never been fond of stagnation. But we have entire weeks of RDF. Granted, I wasn’t fond of the constant threat of earthquakes in B.C., and in Ontario, there was the occasional tornado (one took off the top of a church) and drive-by shootings a few miles away (which, in a strange way, is weather-related because most of the real wackos like warm weather).

Weather like this—on the first official day of summer—always makes me wonder if we should be on the move again, to somewhere warmer. But then I think of all the times when we were living elsewhere, and I would have given anything for a whiff of salt air or a glance of Cabot Tower or the Atlantic Ocean. That’s usually enough to make me appreciate being back here. I think of all the people who wish they could be here, but have little choice but to go away to find work. Then I think, a little cold weather is not so bad, even in June.

And pretty soon, it really will be summer. Any day now. Yup. Any day now.

GC

No comments: