Deep Summer and Dandelion Wine!
July 30, 2024 | Topics: Spotlight, Stories
By Eddee Daniel
“It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
I stepped outside just after dawn this morning, as I often do to get a dose of exercise first thing. I never tire of that first breath of fresh morning air, breathing in the world long and warm and slow. The trick, as I see it, is to make each day of summer feel like the first. That breath transports me to a place so deep inside I think it must reside in bone marrow! Do you have a favorite season? Mine is summer. While October is my favorite month because of the spectacle of autumn colors, as an entire season, summer is incomparable—despite the heat, which wrecks it for some people. At least we haven’t had debilitating heat so far; it’s been a mild, wet summer in contrast with last year.
I’ll tell you the main reason I am so fond of summer. That place in my bone marrow to which I am transported each morning in summer … is childhood. No matter how old I get (so far, knock on wood), I can still taste that sense of endless possibility that was a natural part of my childhood. Sometimes I think ten must have been the perfect age. Back then, when school let out for the summer, it was as if there were no tomorrows; no worries. Without homework or deadlines neither clock nor calendar has any power. Summer was an endless stream of days filled with trees to climb, creeks to cross, dark forests to explore—and it didn’t matter that these natural wonders occupied a small corner of my suburban city, on the fringes of the cul-de-sac where I was privileged to live.
When I was fifteen I discovered Ray Bradbury. I was a voracious reader and quickly devoured everything he wrote. He is best known for his science fiction, some of which is quite dark. But my favorites were his paeans to childhood, especially his short novel Dandelion Wine. In it he distills that sense of carefree endlessness as if it were the main ingredient in dandelion wine. To paraphrase Bradbury, when you are fifteen you think you know everything, but if at twenty-five you still think you know everything, then you are still fifteen. I believe Bradbury may have helped me make the transition from childhood to adulthood without feeling as if I’d lost it all.
“Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
It is the exploratory character of childhood that I wish to maintain; the feeling that everything is new, the world an unending place to discover and cherish. Despite all that I now know, flush with adult knowledge, about the world’s travails—pollution, extinction, climate change, overpopulation and all—or maybe because of it, I make it a practice to seek out and enjoy new places as often as possible. Places where the prevailing experience is nature, that is, as opposed to human-engineered environments. But even more important than seeking out new places is seeing what is all around with fresh eyes.
“I’m ALIVE. Thinking about it, noticing it, is new. You do things and don’t watch. Then all of a sudden you look and see what you’re doing and it’s the first time, really.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
As I turn the calendar to August, I am reminded that summer is not endless. I’ve long considered July to be “deep summer,” the time when spring is well behind, autumn still far off. It is an auspicious moment, appropriate for reviewing the achievements of the first half of summer. And so, I invite you to enjoy a selection of parks and preserves that I have visited so far during this season that have not made it into a previous blog post. For the sake of brevity, each is represented by a single photo, which is never adequate to convey the character of a place. You can use the links in the captions to access more information about them.
“And some days … were days of hearing every trump and trill of the universe. Some days were good for tasting and some for touching. And some days were good for all the senses at once. This day now … smelled as if a great and nameless orchard had grown up overnight beyond the hills to fill the entire visible land with its warm freshness. The air felt like rain, but there were no clouds.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
The following are a little farther afield than I usually cover here in The Natural Realm, but I thought I’d share them as an addendum.
Note: The banner photo at the top is from Hartung Park, which is jointly owned and managed by the cities of Milwaukee and Wauwatosa.
Related stories:
20 of the Best Beaches in SE Wisconsin
Summer scenes from our wealth of nature!
Badertscher Preserve in midsummer
Summer Bouquet: A panoramic view
The Lakefront: Welcome to summer!
Eddee Daniel is a board member of Preserve Our Parks.
One thought on "Deep Summer and Dandelion Wine!"
Comments are closed.
Loved your collection of Dandelion photos. The Cycnia Moth picture was just what I was trying without success to find on the web. I saw one recently on a Menominee Parkway trail.