I started a draft the other day with another update on what’s happening with Fairfield Lake State Park but I can’t bring myself to share it today. Not because it isn’t valid or interesting but because there’s so much more to write about right now. There’s a tediousness to it all, too. I’ve spent much of the summer immersed in it and then find myself frustrated that the press is still getting so much wrong and that there are also a lot of keyboard warriors out there with terrible opinions based on misinformation. I’m still biding my time for someone to do the proper investigative report on it all but I suppose that will come once we’re at a resolution. Or maybe I’ll have to be the one to do it.
Enough of that for now.
I feel like summer slipped away this year. Part of it is on me being immersed in the state park drama and the other part is to be blamed on the oppressive heat here. We had such a cool and enjoyable spring that I should have known we’d be punished somehow, though I figured after last year’s drought we might get by unscathed. Even the drought of 2011 felt different than this summer did.
I grew up in the suburbs of DFW and was used to many 100* days up there. I was born the summer of 1980 and my parents always regaled me with lore about how hot it was the day I was born. Summer and heat and the fact that I am a Cancer was always ingrained in the mythos of life. Summer + heat + I all go together like peanut butter and jelly. My brother and I spent most summers playing with neighborhood kids in the front yard or up and down our street, retreating inside during the hottest part of the day from 1-4 pm, watching reruns of Gomer Pyle and Andy Griffith with my mom, or playing and reading in our rooms. It was the 80s and 90s after all. When Oprah came on at 4pm we’d head back out to the driveway and play until my dad came home from work. We’d eat dinner, do our after dinner chores, and then head back outside until everyone’s parents started calling them in to get ready for bed. When I was older, a teen, I’d watch Oprah with my mom, maybe dipping outside after dinner to rollerblade in the driveway.
It was always hot but this heat is different. It’s climate change, of course. And the difference of experiencing heat in a kid’s body vs in a 43 year old’s body. I’ve also been working through the compounding of several health issues this summer so that hasn’t been the most conducive to spending a lot of time outdoors, either.
Suffice to say, there has been a great disconnect from myself and the outside world this summer. I normally spend time walking a few evenings a week—that hasn’t happened in months. Part of this is the health issues, I was dealing with hip pain that has been alleviated by five months of physical therapy, but the other part is the idea that stepping outside and walking in the heat sounded abysmal.
I’ve looked wistfully at the natural world while driving around to and from work or doing errands in town. I stare at my own garden from windows and dream of cooler weather and rain. Even in the moments when I steal away outside after 7pm to water some plants, I hurry up and generally don’t dawdle. The moments when I do spend more than 10 minutes watering, I am reminded of what I’ve been missing as I watch a hummingbird search for something in bloom to sip nectar from or listen to the cicadas humming in the trees. Everyone is desperate right now, so any plant in bloom is attracting someone to belly up for a feast.
I hate that Texas summers seem impossible and are getting more impossible. We had no problems exploring humid south Florida in summer when we lived there. Sure, we retreated to swamps where it is cooler, but then again, we’d blaze through intense scrub in the middle of the day, too. I can’t fathom doing that much here in Texas. My husband and I did, though, twice this summer at Gus Engeling WMA and both times I was over it before noon. Which is terribly sad because that place is amazing and I want to immerse myself in it—just not in the summer.
Around my part of the state the post oaks and hickories are turning brown. I can’t tell if they are going dormant early or they are dying. I suspect many are dying but we won’t know the true results of that for several more months or until spring. Most of those trees aren’t being replaced and so over the coming decades we will be seeing a change in the structure of habitat in many of our ecosystems around the state. Sure, there may be some recruitment naturally in some areas, but those trees being lost on older home plots, right of ways, or small parks—those are generally gone. And if we keep having these heat waves every summer with no rain? It will only continue.
There’s a certain depression that comes with watching climate change unfold before your eyes. It’s easy to convince yourself it isn’t so bad when viewed in small snapshots of events. Then you look back and see event after event and take in the whole picture and realize how devastating it all is. That, and when you dig into archives of things written 30+ years ago and realize what was being said then is still being said now, with no changes in course trajectory, well, you then realize you have no reason to believe we will actually do anything about it.
Yesterday I spent some time weeding the paths in our garden. I lathered up in sunscreen, put on a hat, and found the shadier section to sit down in and made some progress. It wasn’t much, but it was something. And even though it was hot the reconnection was exactly what I needed.
Sometimes we just have to push ourselves to remind us of that connection to the outside world.
Stay cool, friends. The seasons will change soon.
Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and can be found on Instagram at @oceanicwilderness. She hosts two podcasts, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and The Garden Path Podcast.
Stay cool, Misti Little! Texas needs your sanity and purpose.
I'm feeling you, Misti.