Summer is a bowl of Flathead cherries.

It’s a quiet day at the office today. I’m sitting with the wastebasket pulled up next to my chair, so I have someplace to deposit pits as I eat my way steadily through a bowl full of ripe Flathead cherries. Cherries are one of the many lovely things about summer. (Of course, for me, various fruits comprise at least half of my list of ‘favorite summer things’… but that’s another post.) I adore the summers in Western Montana, but they are much shorter than I’m used to. In the Midwest, summer is still in full force through the month of August, and often the summer heat hangs in the air into September. Here in Montana, however, August seems to signal the beginning of the end of summer. The night temperatures begin faithfully dipping back down to the 50’s, sunset quickly recedes back into early evening, and even the sunshine feels weaker, as though resigned to allow cooler weather to take back over.
As summer slips away, I always feel tugging sense of loss. Another season of cold to endure before we return to backyard barbecues, camping, and tubing on the river. Fortunately, my cheer returns with the first breath of autumn in the air. Fall is my favorite season, hands down. I love the smells, and the baking, and new jeans and sweaters, and the football games, and the coziness.
Looking back through old entries, I’ve noticed that shifting of the seasons is a recurring topic in my writing. I’m captivated by the subtle changes that move us from season to season. Perhaps it’s my distant Native American heritage peeking through, but I feel drawn to the earth as it renews itself. There’s something awe inspiring about the first shoots of green pushing through the cold hard ground, or the first leaf crisping and falling from its branch. Change is inevitable, change is necessary. Change is beautiful.

I look forward to one more bowl of cherries before fall.