Give up and put your clothes back on

 Here in New Hampshire we have reached the time of year when the house is never warm, but the weather isn't cold enough to justify running the heat. This will fade directly into the time of year when the house is never warm, even with the heat on. Glorious summer had its chance, and decided mostly to skip us this year. I'm not sure where it did show up, but it didn't book a long stay in New England.

In a typical year, May is full of promise and June is full of disappointments. Daylight doesn't automatically mean sunshine. Without sunshine, the relative warmth doesn't bake into your pasty, pale body in shorts and a tee shirt to compensate for the months you've waited. But then July seems to flip a switch. The heat lamp comes on and you can forget the other three-quarters of the year, two-thirds of it with leafless trees. If we're lucky, we get cool nights for sleeping and just hot enough days to enjoy the lakes and mountains. That's the image that everyone carries, anyway. Even before the climate really started to skid out of control, driven by people drunk with power and money, New England's weather had a well earned reputation for variability. You can't always get what you want, even if you're sure you remember it that way.

This summer was an endless June. Frequent rain, some of it so heavy that it caused destructive flooding, gave way only briefly to sunny days before the next batch of clouds arrived. We didn't see more than a moment of excessive heat, but nighttime temperatures were warm, and dew points high. We waited through what seemed like unending tepid gooeyness for brief visits of drier warmth. And now it's over. Daylight slips below twelve hours, soon to plunge faster and faster toward its low point three months away. The sun's angle drops to a stabbing glare when it shows at all.

If we lived in the tropics, the length of day wouldn't vary and the sun would always arc high overhead. A friend who lived in Ecuador for a couple of years said that you could choose your temperatures by changing your elevation. But forget the short, light nights of summer in more northerly latitudes. Forget long twilights, too. So we ride around the millions of miles of orbit ahead of us to get to our next shot at the light and warmth we hope for.

Every season has its attractions. I see people getting excited for autumn's cooler temperatures, bright foliage, and signature flavors. Some are also planning happily for the best of winter, that other highly weather dependent season. Another casualty of climate change, winter could easily turn out to be cold, dark, wet, and nothing more. In that case, there's always hot beverages and baked goods. But just the right  amount of usable snow for a couple or three months would be better for the economy and the scenery. And you'd still have hot beverages and baked goods. So go find the appropriate layers to wear for the moment and face the future.