July
38ºC, 39ºC
I have a memory from when I was younger, of driving with my father through town and looking at the sky through the windows. A sky covered in clouds, rainless clouds, in a hot and dry winter. Some planes were flying over, their sounds otherworldly for an 11 year-old. They’re dropping something over the clouds, you know, my father explained me, for them to rain.
It didn’t work.
You see, I’m a child of the nineties. Born to parents who were quite aware of climate change. For me, global warming was never a matter of if or how, it was a mater of when. Even the when wasn’t up to much question, let’s be honest, the when was now.
40ºC, 41ºC
I can’t sleep at night. I turn and toss in a hot bed, accompanied by the sounds of crickets outside, and smile bitterly - everybody wants to live in a forest until it’s fire season.
Days are blazing hot. By 9 in the morning, it’s already too hot to be outside. Summers on the hill have thought me something about yearly rhythms and how we dance with them, and that is that summer is the passive season to do nothing most day, most days. I often think of how, back in the city, I did feel the temperature changes throughout the year, and the lenghtening or shortening of days, but life just goes on. We walk from one acclimatized place to another. Summer’s late sunsets or winter’s short days don’t really change much of our day-to-day, dictated by timetables and obligations in places. It’s quite different here, when so much of our day is defined by how it feels outside the door.
ACs aren’t common around here, even in the homes of those who have lived their whole live in this region. It’s not something I’m familiar with either, throughout all the homes I’ve lived in since I was born. We’ve always beaten the heat with fans. Which we now don’t have at home until we switch batteries to something better.
Growing up and observing my grandparents on the mountains, I’ve learn that the best allies to keep cool in summer are outside shade by the house, drinking water, shutting shutters and curtains, painting houses white, avoiding south-facing windows. Layering also seems to be one, even though I haven’t mastered that art yet - I’ve never sen my grandparents, or the Elders around me, wearing shorts in summer, or thin short-sleeved blouses. There are actual layers of clothing - it is no secret that layers create pockets of air that act like an air conditioning… It’s just a hard one for me still.
42ºC, 43ºC
I remember a summer, I must have been 7 at the time, when the thermometer hit 40ºC. The first 40ºC of my life! Those 40 felt like a big thing, an Event. I remember the horror in my father’s eyes, how are we coming to this. Then, slowly and over the following years, hitting 40ºC every summer became normal and expectable. Then 41ºC. I remember my first 42ºC, only a few years ago. And my first 43ºC. I remember my first 44ºC as a day spend barely surviving. Thank goodness for shade, and the privilege of having a car to take us to places, as long as they’re not too far away for our ’97 car has no cooling system.
I remember learning that temperatures are always measured in the shade. Do I want to know what would happen if my thermometer was placed in the sun? I do not.
At night, temperatures don’t drop enough for the normal levels of moisture in the air to be replenished. Needless to say, we are living in a matchbox at this point.
Tonight, it’s another hot night I can’t fall asleep. When I close my eyes, my dreams are made of scorching, dancing lights coming through the window, and flames. I want a deep, restorative sleep, but sleeping means lowering the guard. Sleeping means I will not be awake in time if we need to call the firefighters and wait for them to arrive from town, and maybe it means not being awake in time to pack our bags, which I haven’t prepared this summer yet, and just leave. Sleeping means I may miss the minutes it would take for the abandoned and overgrown pieces of land surrounding us on the hill we live on to go ablaze before getting to us. Again, the bitter realization - everybody wants to live in a forest until it’s fire season. Me too.
Summer is scary. Of course, you know that by now. The smoked scent becomes a strange part of the landscape. Dogs barking at night, a false alarm. Every car rolling away in the distance as I try to sleep, an unconscious threat.
44ºC
Now here’s something about summer. I never treat plant people with as much reverence as I do during summer. The perennials and trees in our garden and around us survive all year long. That means they are enduring a temperature range of over 50ºC from one half of the year to the other (and probably more. Again, temperatures are measured in the shade). They may not thrive during the coldest days of winter and the hottest days of summer, but they survive. And keep their energies for when conditions are more favorable for growth. How incredibly impressive is this? They do better than I do, who must shelter when it all becomes too much. Plant people and other-than-human species who don’t hibernate are a lesson of resilience witnessed in close proximity.
The vegetable garden is smaller this year, because water is scarce and tending for trees seems more important right now, in the long run. And yet, when in the early morning I water my vegetables, annuals and perennials alike, I feel a strong sense of kinship and reciprocity. Their leaves’ lush green is a promise, that no matter how though it gets we are all in this together, becoming more resilient and adaptive. This is hope. Tending a garden is hope.
45ºC
The antidote for climate doom is climate action.
PS. I may have written this for myself, to walk my mind through what’s keeping me awake once again tonight. It’s uncomfortably hot and my head hurts. And now I will give in to the sleep, as I must, remembering we are not completely alone, nested in a community always ready to jump into cars at no matter what time at night to help each other. Remembering that rest is so vital, and tomorrow is another day of drinking water, and seeking shade, and caring for those around me - rooted, winged or legged they might be. Maybe summer is not so passive after all.