The Smell of Summer

It smells like summer outside today. Clean, fresh, green and warm. That feeling that a new season is about to spring forth into life and change everything. We don't really have a Spring in Arizona. It is winter, then it's hot again. That's it. The heat is stifling. Suffocating, heavy as a wet blanket and thick. You can feel like you're drowning in the heat sometimes. Like it is too much to take, and you will simply suffocate or melt where you sit, and I am not looking forward to that feeling. But I love summer, none the less. I love the feeling of Summer. I love the energy and the freedom, and the sense of freshness and youth. The changing of the seasons is a spiritual thing for me. I feel tied to the seasons in some way. Like I change inside right along with them, and they move me, and open me and give me gifts and blessings and tests. The things I need to keep growing and learning and changing.

Summer feels like new love. That feeling in the beginning when all you can do is smile. When everything your new love does makes you blush and grin and swoon and melt. That feeling of running and falling and being blissfully asleep in the grass all at the same time. Pure splendor, with no baggage or jaded problems. It feels sometimes like those fleeting realizations we have when we're falling toward love that things are moving too fast. Like the world is spinning a million times harder and your feet are coming off the ground.

At the end of it, we are sunburned and tired and another season older. Things wind down. Become quiet and soft. Our new love either bends gracefully and gently into the sweet earthy tones and somber mood of Fall, or it withers in the cold and snaps in two. Dying out like a smothered spark.

Summer is a time to be free. To leave the house in barely any clothes. Summer dresses so thin they're almost paper, and shorts up to there. To let the warm sun bake your skin and rub your shoulders til they glow pink and bronze and shimmer in the light. It is a time to run wild. To dive into the cooling waters and let the tide take you away. The season of relaxation and bountiful gifts. Be young. Be free. Fall in love. Open up and remember your inner child. Let the wild winds take you, and leave traces of somewhere far from here in your hair.