Nature is amazing. Inspirational. Mysterious. Calming. I know that we are meant to bathe in it and breathe it in. For me, during the summer, much of that adulation must occur from afar.
As children, my sister and I would disappear for hours into the park behind our suburban 60s split level home in Westfield, or into the woods and lakefront surrounding our tiny cabin in Upper Greenwood Lake. We would explore the terrain and exercise our imaginations, “cooking” mushrooms and berries, “riding” log horses, and daring each other to step into the mysterious man-eating muck that covered the lakebed.
But the intervening years since those halcyon days have cast a shadow on those sunlit romps. Adult concerns and wariness have tamed the wild child in me in many ways, including diminishing my appetite for wilderness. The threats grow like the creatures in the classic Where the Wild Things Are and transform nature from a dream into a nightmare.
The decidedly not dear deer ticks have infested our neck of those woods with not only Lyme disease (named for a town right here in Connecticut), but myriad other tick-borne illnesses. I will hike only in long pants and high wellies, sleeves rolled down, and head covered (my niece once found a tick in her hair after one of our birding expeditions in an open field). I spray myself with a poison that I fear only slightly less than the scourge from which it protects me. I even avoid walking through grass with my feet clad only in flip flops and check meticulously for ticks if I do. I know too many friends whose lives Lyme has upended. One who contracted a related, undiagnosed tick illness while pregnant. She and her son still suffer long-lasting consequences. A cherished yoga teacher had to retire because of the recurring joint pain. A relative who claims that about 70% of his days are “OK,” years after having contracted it. The list goes on long enough to keep my walks short and confined to the wet sand edge of the Long Island Sound.
Mosquitoes apparently convene and strategize about how they will find and swarm me. I can incur nine bites just taking the trash bin out on Monday evening. These bites don’t stay small, pink, and pretty like candy dots. They blossom like Pepto Bismol colored popcorn, leaving pink puddle-shaped bruises on my skin after the bumps have faded. While enduring the maddening itch, despite generous application of multiple remedies, I worry about the imminent onset of West Nile Virus.
But my reaction to those little stingers pales in comparison to my dread of poison ivy. I believe my over-the-top reaction is self-inflicted in some ways, having overwhelmed and scared my own immune system after a walk to a nearby stream so the boys, then three and five could lob stones into the shallow, babbling water. Once home I noticed the telltale collection of pebbly bumps on my thigh just above the left knee. Knowing that the oil urushiol, caused the reaction, I loaded a cotton ball with Clinique toner and aimed to dry it out. I failed. I did, however, triumph in spreading the irritant to the entirety of my upper thigh, so badly so that when my doctor saw my bubbly rosé balloon of an upper thigh, he gasped and let me know that he “had never, ever seen such a bad case of poison ivy.” I no doubt so angered my immune system in my futile attempt to help it, such that from that moment on, the tri-leaf plant has turned into a mortal enemy. I cannot get near it without erupting; I’m convinced that it’s gone way beyond brushing up against a leaf to some supernatural ability of the original culprit’s kindred plants to spot me and spew out aerosol urushiol particles to irritate me. In the handful of times that I have incurred the demon parasite since – its only purpose is, after all, to suck the life out of the trees that host it, and eventually, cancer-like, kill them – it has sprouted not only at the point of contact, but all over my body, spot after spot. It may look like a chicken pox outbreak, but the itch feels more like a slow burn, making me want to peel my skin off. I cannot sleep and no topical solution even touches the agony. I want to sit in an ice cube bath or stand in a scalding shower where very hot water sometimes numbs the pain. I know enough now to race, not walk, to my doctor at the first sign of the outbreak, to beg for a fix of prednisone to make the suffering cease. It scares me so much that I roll my windows up when I drive close to tree trunks covered and choking with the vine.
As if these complaints didn’t suffice, I also feel just plain crappy all summer. The heat and humidity slay me. I feel tired, heavy, and headachy when I open the door and walk out into hot, wet, weighty air. I find it hard to breathe. The combination often triggers a migraine. I can no longer lay for long hours in direct sunlight slathered in Bain de Soleil with an aluminum trifold reflector under my chin as I did as a teen at the Jersey Shore. Now I cower, vampire like, in the shadows, waiting for sundown to signal that it’s safe for me to emerge. I bitch and moan to very tolerant friends and family all summer long from under my baseball caps, sunglasses, and cooling towels. A recent New York Times article brought some comfort in letting me know that this reaction is not all that unusual: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/well/mind/summer-seasonal-affective-disorder.html .
This summer even managed to eliminate one simple pleasure I’d enjoyed from inside. I put out copious amounts of bird seed and revel in the antics of the mourning doves, cardinals, blue jays, sparrows, and house finches that come to feed. Sadly, the CT Audubon Society advised us to do that no longer due to a yet-unidentified scourge plaguing and killing songbirds up and down the East Coast. https://www.ctaudubon.org/2021/07/something-is-killing-birds-to-the-south-taking-in-your-bird-feeders-now-might-help-to-keep-it-from-spreading/
Only Compo Beach redeems this satanic season. I stroll there early in the morning or late in the afternoon to comb the shore for sea glass. I sit on the sand with those same long-suffering-due-to-having-to-listen-to-me friends and family and watch sailboat races and a symphony of seabirds while enjoying evening picnics and adult beverages. The cloudscapes and sunsets and hermit crabs entertain me endlessly. This place – this place alone – brings me some outdoor solace around the summer solstice.
While eating outdoors always sounds nice, either the wind blows, or the sun blinds, or the bugs bug. While yoga on the beach sounds nice, my balance and private body parts suffer from the ubiquitous sand. While so many look forward to the hazy, lazy days of summer, I dread them, stay mostly cloistered inside, and wait for that first crisp whisp of autumn air longingly.
Excellent, you make nature sound wonderful lol