For the past three years, I’ve lived in the gateway to “Vacationland,” in Portland, Maine. Maine sees over two million tourists arrive each year to summer in lake houses and on coastal islands. They come north to escape the heat and humidity and revel in the three most wondrous months Maine has to offer. I don’t blame them, summer here is spectacular. Before I moved here, I had not once heard the term “summering” outside of literature. A Great Gatsby-esque twist of the English language, a noun turned verb to celebrate affluence and escape. An instance of spending the summer, as for a vacation or for cooler weather. As summers get warmer and their weather more extreme, the concept of summering becomes less of an escape from light discomfort (from the city smells and sweat and crowds) and more from a genuine threat to wellbeing and life itself. For most of us, summer is hot and crowded, fast and loud. Moments of quiet and cool come in parks in early mornings after the city has released as much of its heat as it will before the sun rises once more. A blast of AC as you enter a store. The wet whipping wind as a storm sops up the heat of the afternoon. Conversation around tables in muted twilight, plates pushed back and wine glasses empty. This is the summering most of us are familiar with. It’s an angst-filled, sweaty, social affair. A rolling black-out, “was last July this hot?”, picking at the damp label of a $7 Modelo pooling on a sidewalk table just to get out of the apartment kind of summering. There’s a kind of giving over one must do in summer, which allows heat and humidity to move past topics of small talk and excuses for bowing out of plans. Follow the rhythm of the day. Open the windows at night and listen to the crickets and cars passing by. Close up early, draw the curtains before the morning sun bakes the back bedroom. Stock the ice trays and don’t dare use the oven. Keep the fans on and the lights low. Water the herbs in the window box. Meet friends for picnics, for beers, for afternoons at the beach. And do it all again tomorrow.

At the same time, these aren’t our grandparents' summers. Summer these days feels far too much like we are at the bottom of a river valley in a town still recovering from last summer’s floods watching dark clouds roll in. Floods deposit nutrient-rich silt and recharge groundwater. Fires spread ash and clear brush and debris for healthier meadows and forests. Like summer, the “natural disasters” the season is known for are natural and beneficial, despite their devastation. But without a break, a period of recharging and rest, the imbalance tips towards destruction. There’s a rhythm to keeping your head above water through the summer months, but to give over entirely is to give up. Summering is as much riding the wave as it is a resistance, a rebellion. There is an anger at what summer has become and at the people and companies responsible. The “new normal” of summer that climate change ushers us headlong into is brutal. It’s not the same tuck your chin, hunch your shoulders, brace against the cold mentality of winter, but an overwhelming now-ness. The heat, the smoke, the floods: they’re draining, and create an intensity that nearly forbids reflection. Winter leaves you blue and melancholy, longing for spring. Summer kicks you to the curb and leaves you deciding whether to get back up. And despite it all, we like it. No thought or daydream of winter even crosses your mind until a late August breeze rattles the leaves and blows in a sweet, dry scent, whispering, “fall is on its way, fall is on its way.” That there is an end to this. How long will that continue to be true? Another two months will pass before the spell of summer subsides, leaving us all with a pulsing headache and a need to lie down. In the meantime, we hold our breath as we rush round and round. It’s a dizzying affair that takes us for a ride, so we might as well have our fun while it lasts.