Seasons

We're winding up the perfect summer; perfect, that is, for those who enjoy complaining about the weather. (And let's face it, over here, that's just about everybody.)

After an auspicious spring, summer opened with an uninspiring June, followed by the wettest July on record. August offered us a single weekend of actual, summer-like weather (and you just know someone, somewhere, was complaining about how hot and sunny it was), and then, inexplicably, it was autumn. Every dawn brought grey, wet, miserable weather, and the frigid nights rivaled anything November could have thrown at us. It didn't snow, but it wouldn't have surprised me if it had. Some people even turned their heat on. (Not us, we're too tight; we just bundled up in jumpers and blankets and whined about how cold it was.)

The weather has improved recently, but it no longer matters. We're in the final gasp of August now--Bank Holiday Weekend--which passes for Labor Day weekend in the UK and, likewise, signals the official, if not the technical, end of summer. Any sunny days after this will be classified as 'Indian Summer.'

The notion of 'Indian Summer' in Britain always tickles me. First of all, it's an American invention (if we were to have a true British Indian summer, it would have to be 110 degrees) and the climate here makes it nearly impossible to meet the official qualifications. Anyone raised in New England knows that Indian Summer refers to a stretch of summer-like days following a hard frost after the autumnal equinox. We occasionally get a hard frost here (known as a hoarfrost) but that mostly only happens in the dead of winter.

Real Indian Summer (or is it Indigenous People's Summer these days?) is a grand time, with deep blue skies spanning red and gold dappled vistas. It's a time for apple cider (the non-alcoholic variety), pumpkin pie, apple dumplings and a bowl of steaming raccoon stew (hey, I grew up in the boondocks, we ate whatever we could kill). For me, this time of year always brought with it a deep, almost melancholy, nostalgia, thinking back on the long, seemingly endless, summer days that were now drawing to a close, watching as the last of the leaves drifted to earth, leaving behind a skeletal landscape, soon to be covered over by winter's icy blanket as the world sank into a deep slumber and waited for spring.

Here, there's no deep slumber; the world just gets tired and cranky and refuses to take a nap. There are no long, snow-bound weekends to devote to jigsaw puzzles, reading or renting half a dozen movies and curling up on the sofa with a cup of hot apple cider (this time with a tot of rum in it). Winter in Sussex means you fasten an extra snap on your waterproof and maybe put on a fleece for your postprandial constitutional.

It's even impossible to enjoy the benefits of my many jumpers; I can't say how many times on a winter's afternoon I've had to pull off a comfy pullover because it was too warm out. In the States, sweaters were basic winter survival gear, like hot cocoa and Cream-o-Wheat with brown sugar sprinkled over the top.

All of this is romantic nonsense, of course.

If I never again wake up to three feet of snow that has to be shifted off of my car and out of my driveway so I can get to work, it will be too soon. Snow might be pretty for the first half hour or so, but drizzle doesn't need to be shoveled and green is a perfectly acceptable color for a winter landscape.

Still, if I had the chance, I wouldn't turn down the opportunity of spending another October in New England, amid the blazing trees, the smell of apples and wood-smoke and the perfect miracle that is a true, Indian Summer.

Honest Indigenous People.