The other week with summer in full swing I got an email from a neighbour that started with something like, “Hope you’re enjoying the warmer weather.” I was going to write back something like, “Oh my heck I f*ckin’ hate it,” but decided not to.
I’m writing this on a 38 degree (Celsius) day. Sophie’s sprawled out on the cool tiles and I’m not wearing much. I’m just glad it hasn’t reached 45 degrees yet this summer.
Edited to add – that same day in the evening it dropped to the low twenties and started raining, which I took full advantage of by stripping down to run around the backyard in the rain with my partner.
Even though summer isn’t my favourite season (that would be winter, the polar opposite – pardon the pun), it is still a necessary season of course and there are still lessons to be found.
So here is some summer wisdom.
Related reads:
- Lessons from Late Autumn
- Winter Solstice Wisdom
- Spring Equinox Wisdom
- Lessons from my Nectarine Tree
Fire Wisdom
Content warning! This section of the post discusses and shows potentially distressing content regarding bushfires and animals. Skip to the Invincible Winter section if you might be bothered by such content.
Throughout my whole childhood I’ve been terrified of uncontrolled fires burning down cherished places and destroying cherished things.
Living in a rural-ish region of South Australia, there’s always a bushfire risk in summer. My family and I have evacuated from our home twice now (following our bushfire survival plan); once when I was living there and the second time when I was back visiting.
The first time we evacuated was at the very beginning of 2015. It was on the evening of January 2nd that my mum, sister and I evacuated with our three cats to my grandma’s house, and my dad and brother stayed to defend the property. It was mainly a precautionary evacuation.
As soon as I saw the news that there was a fire relatively close by and saw the orange-tinged sky, I was ready to leave. But I think some members of my family thought I was just over-reacting, until we called a neighbour who said he’d already sent his family members packing away to safety. Things were then taken more seriously, for which I was grateful, but still a bit pissed that it took a neighbour’s decision for my own intuition and gut instinct to be taken seriously and not put down to over-reacting.
To be fair I was (and still am sometimes) prone to panicking, which is what I did that first time.
The cats had their longest car ride since kittenhood on our way down to my grandma’s house. At the time I remember thinking, goodness knows what the neighbours think with some randos rocking up next door/over the road carrying three covered cages with desperate meows coming from one of them.
We stayed at my grandma’s house for a while, who was visiting family interstate. The cats had free run of the house.
When we were allowed back home, our house was still standing and with no serious damage around the property.
The second time we evacuated was just before Christmas in 2019. This fire was a little more serious to us and affected our property, but our house again remained standing.
Where our house is situated, I’d always been told that out of the four general directions around our house, if a fire started from three of those then there would probably be little to worry about; one side has a green crop of cherry trees in season, another has a lot of well-trodden and eaten pasture with a bushfire-savvy neighbour, and the third side has a paddock with nothing much to burn. The fourth side, however, had a forest, and it was said that if a fire started from out in that direction, we’d be buggered.
And so of course on a very hot and very windy day, a fire started out in that direction, beyond the forest, but blowing in our direction.
My response to this threatening fire was a far cry from the panic-stricken way I reacted to the first one, even though I knew full well that this one was worse for us. Maybe that’s why I kept my head, because it was necessary.
While Mum cranked up the watering system around the house and we were getting ready to leave, I called a neighbour and asked what he wanted done with some cows that he had grazing on our property. His response was to leave them and he’d sort it out.
There were four of them; two had just given birth to calves, and two were still heavily pregnant.
Mum and I got the cats, the rest of the family got the fire bags loaded up, and away we went, again to my grandma’s house.
I was holding it together pretty well during the evacuation process, but when we were out of harms way I mainly cried about the animals.
When we were evacuated and I was visibly upset, both times people around me thought it was about the fear that the house would burn down. But really I was crying for the animals. I was worried for the animals, particularly the ladies I’d got to know in the paddock and their little ones, and also the innocent and defenceless wildlife whose homes were being destroyed and lives lost.
Mum and I went shopping one afternoon for some essentials because we weren’t expecting to not be allowed to go back home for so long. We were in the food shops and I saw a happy smiling cow on some butter (deceptive marketing at its finest), and I broke down in tears because I thought about my friends in the paddock and wondered what had happened to them. On the news I’d heard about and seen horrific images of places I knew burned down, animals burned, and just generally emotionally upsetting news content.
I was glad to have my partner around this time, who also evacuated and stayed with me.
When someone was allowed back onto the property to assess the damage, it was my mum’s friend’s son. Mum told me that her friend had asked her son to make sure to let her know about the cows and their welfare so that she could tell Mum who could tell me because I was worried.
They were fine. They all survived and managed to stay safe. How they did this is a mystery though – when I went back up to the hills (when we were finally allowed to return to our homes or in some people’s cases what was left of them), all I saw was charred ground in the paddock where the cows were. The whole paddock. I don’t know how they survived, how they shifted around with their calves and pregnant bodies to avoid the burning grasses, but they did. I was so happy to see them chewing on their hay when we got back.
Looking at the view from a neighbour’s house up the hill it looked like some post-apocalyptic shit.
We lost some fences, there was a lot of burnt ground, except for a ‘green ring’ around the house that my mum had been diligently watering for such an occurrence as a fire. That preparation saved our house and made it much easier for our bushfire-savvy neighbour to defend.
We lost a small shed, and a ride-on lawnmower (the keys of which are now a Christmas decoration hung up on our tree like a bauble for the festive season). Some people lost their houses, their animals, and a lot more than their fences.
So while summer for a lot of people is about fun and the beach and finally warmer weather! to me it’s a time I’ve always been on high-alert for bushfires.
Within a matter of months, people visiting our property would never know that a fire had swept through; the paddocks had vibrant green grass, growing better and more nutritious for the cows, the gum trees were sprouting new growth, and things were thriving.
The wisdom of the fires though is that sometimes things need to burn to the ground in order to come alive and anew again. Like the grass in the paddock. Or the Australian native bushes in the decimated pine forest that are now thriving.
I also personally learned lessons of being able to handle far more than I thought I was capable of, how to start releasing control of uncontrollable situations, and realising that I actually don’t do too badly in an immediate crisis (afterwards is a different story though).
An event like this really taught me what my values are – I wasn’t worried about the material things, or about any of the things I usually worry about (except for fires). It was a situation where it zapped me into the present to focus on the here and now. There were some material items that mattered to me, and my family and I prepare those things in what we call a “fire bag.” My dad often says, when he receives something that has a lot of value to him, “This is going straight in the fire bag,” reminiscent of the character in The Castle when he says, “This is going straight to the pool room.”
I cared about the animals, like the cows and making sure the cats were safe first and foremost. I cared that the people in my life were safe and well. These are the most important things to me, and the fires put my values into perspective.
An Invincible Winter
It was Albert Camus who said, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
As I read that some time ago I thought, in the heat of summer, I finally learned that within me I carry an invincible winter.
When things are heating up to uncomfortable or unbearable levels ‘out there’ in the world, I have within me an unmeltable winter.
This isn’t about climate change and the world literally heating up. This is a metaphor.
I’ve heard it said that we’re living in a masculine paradigm, where the structure of our working lives revolves around the masculine action-oriented success-driven productivity-addicted culture. Which is necessary; we need to get shit done. But we need to make sure it’s the right shit we’re getting done, and know why we need to get it done. This is where the feminine comes in to balance it all.
The feminine is associated with receptivity, nurturing, gentleness and fierceness in equal measure, slowing down and deep listening. On a personal and literal level, I listen to my body, and work with the cyclical energy as to what action or inaction to take; in my personal experience and observations, the masculine tends to be more linear, the feminine more cyclical.
What does this have to do with seasons? The height of masculinity is correlated with peak summer, and the depth of femininity is correlated with deep winter.
With this in mind, clearly I’m much more comfortable with the feminine than the masculine, and I’m working to bring that more into balance.
So while I’m feeling the pressure of hustle-culture mentality and have been brainwashed to believe that we need to deserve or earn rest among other unhelpful and damaging beliefs, I have within me a strong reserve of deep feminine inner peace, grace, and soothing gentleness (and sometimes fierceness) of winter.
When the summer sun burns the brightest metaphorically and literally, I remember that I have a wealth of winter wisdom and unmeltable deep-listening grace to draw upon to get me through the challenging times.
Enjoy the fruits!
With all this whinging and story time about how much I dislike summer, let’s end on a really sweet and positive note.
In Australia, the only time you’ll be able to eat a mango in season is in summer. I love mangoes. And strawberries eaten straight from the bushes in the garden (unless the shinglebacks or blue-tongue lizards have got to them first).
My favourite thing about the summer is the availability and abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables.
As a metaphor, I like to think of summer as a time to enjoy the fruits, to enjoy what you’ve produced or co-created with the universe or the powers that be (whatever that means for you).
Autumn is a time for going within, for rest and renewal; winter is a fallow time to plan and plant the seeds of intentions and literal seeds ready for blooming in the spring. With this spring blooming soon comes the ripe fruits of summer, and then comes autumn when it’s again time for rest. And the cycle continues.
Each season is necessary; we can’t be producing all the time (which the masculine paradigm would strongly disagree with and may be a component of why we find ourselves in so many worldly pickles, because we don’t take enough time to rest and think about what we’re doing before we get caught up in the doing and action), and summer is the time to sit back and enjoy the mangoes in our lives.
Summer is a time to enjoy the literal fruits, but also a time to enjoy the metaphorical fruits of your work during the year in the other seasons.
Final Thoughts
Do you love summer or would you prefer to skip it or have a very mild summer? How do you feel about this season?
And most important, do you have any summer wisdom to share with me and others?
I’d love to know your quiet thoughts! You can let me know in the comments below or reach out to me directly at [email protected].
Much love from,
P.S. For extra content, updates and other good stuff, you’re warmly invited to join The Quiet and Curious folk community by signing up to the email newsletter below:
