Time Slips

By Danielle Owczarski

Crickets sound their high-pitched hum, blaring sirens swell and shrink, sweat percolates in overlapping areas, distant music floats through the moonlit breeze, insomnia returns, a kingfisher chatters along the lake shore, a main sail flaps in the breeze – all signifying the shift to summer in Burlington. Spring has its moments with its ephemeral blooms, but with summer, we shed the last layers of clothing. White skin peeks out no longer shy, soon many shades darker and prominently displayed. We relish the summer months without the taunting of spring’s undulating meteorological moods. Like our seasonal feathered friends, we break out into bold colors and partake in the ritualistic dance of the Burlington Jazz Festival and music on the waterfront. The neighborhood druids welcome the summer solstice by gathering around the Earth Clock in Oakledge Park, drumming in the sunlight’s energy.

Midsummer festivals, boldly celebrated in pre-Christian times and still today in many cultures under an altered guise, take place around the solstice. The Oxford English Dictionary states that summer has its origins in Old English as sumor, sumere, and somera among other variations first recognized in text c. 825, referring to its role as the warmest season of the year. And while summer more accurately applies to the astronomical solstice then to the actual beginning of the seasonal and climatic change, it is understood as a time of fertility, growth, and warmth. Bonfires and heavy drinking are the most common signifiers of midsummer revelries throughout the world, the celebration linked to the birth of John the Baptist, born six months prior to Jesus. However, stripped of its religious shroud, in the silence and beauty of the early morning, summer is the celebration of energy transformed into life.

Despite the simplicity of its title, summer is dynamic, generating an ever-changing understory and flow of biotic change. Those of us who work outside during this time of year follow the influx of hatching insects good and bad. Appearing first are the black flies, followed by the deer flies and mosquitoes. While the former two usually abide by shorter seasons, the mosquitoes continue hatching throughout the late summer months. Overshadowed by the annoying, small flying insects are those who act as predators keeping them at bay.

Dragonflies, unbeknownst to some, live most of their lives (up to four years) as armored nymphs in calm aquatic environments. The warm sun of early summer heats the waters, enticing the mature nymphs to the surface where they crawl out and clasp themselves to tall grasses, wood, and stone. Here they begin their hatch. Attached to a cattail leaf above the water, the nymph’s exoskeleton begins to dry and crack along the back where the dragonfly emerges, compressed and translucent, expanding into a world of bug feasts, avian maneuvers, sex, and egg laying. Their terrestrial phase occurs no longer than two months causing their numbers to dwindle by late summer.

Those of us working inside this time of year suffer through the mocking rays of light filtering through paned glass windows. The vigor of those coming in from outside tickles the nerves and draws conscious thought away from tasks and into daydreams of lake breezes on bare skin, lush winding hiking trails, and the transforming hues of clouds low on the horizon. For most of us trying to take advantage of the summer day, a strange phenomenon occurs, while the length of the day in relation to sunlight increases, time seems to move more quickly. Weekends fill with social obligations, and the list of things to do and places to visit become too numerous to accomplish. Summer spurs the endless chase of the elusive present moment.

In nature, as the season progresses, the once electrifying greens of spring begin to dull. Before we know it, tomatoes are ripening into deep reds and purples, and the goldenrods and asters are blooming. In town, the college students are moving into their dorms and young children board the yellow bus while we wait patiently in traffic. Some welcome the change with anticipation of harvest festivals, cider donuts, and corn mazes, while others feel depressed by the notion of winter’s encroaching darkness. Despite our resistance, the mayfly, stonefly, and caddisfly, each year during this time, hatch, lay their eggs, and die. The brook trout rise to eat, and a small red maple leaf flutters, dropping slowly to the water’s surface.