Coming from the Southeast coast, and having been raised just outside of the D.C. area, I never appreciated summertime much due to the mugginess and oppressive heat. Summers were mostly spent running from your air conditioned house to your air conditioned vehicle to whatever air conditioned building you were headed to. Rinse and repeat.
Every summer, for the previous 10 years before moving to Colorado 21 years ago, I came out here to Evergreen to visit my best friend at the time, who had fled the heat, bugs and mugginess of Florida. She had an amazing property at 10,000 feet off of Fall River Road (on the way to Saint Mary’s Glacier), and we spent a lot of time partying in Evergreen and Idaho Springs along with touring much of Colorado during my weeklong vacations. Once I moved here, we spent many more fun times together, but she ultimately got into breeding Paso Finos and needed to get a property more farm-like. So, once she sold her house and moved away, we ended up losing touch, as can happen with good friends along life’s journey.
But I’ll always hold her responsible for my move out here and I am eternally grateful. Sometimes, a person is part of your life for just a segment—long enough to make the impact they were meant to, and then they move on. I believe that’s all part of each person’s life path.
Back to summer… one of the things that impacted me so much on my vacations here was how incredibly beautiful the weather was, and how you could actually sit outside on a patio in the middle of the day and enjoy brunch, lunch or drinks, and not die of heat stroke. How you could go for a walk in the evenings and not get chewed up by bugs, and you might even need to don a sweater. And, most importantly, the ice in your drinks hardly ever melted and the glasses never had condensation on the outside. People should appreciate the lack of necessity for coasters here because glasses never sweat! I was fascinated and smitten by these things.
Having endured the summers of the Southeast for so long, it’s no wonder that all winter long and into spring, I am the one who never complains about
the snowstorms around here. Even the years we are still getting them well into May, and everyone else is bitching and moaning about them, I am actually still enjoying them—so much so that I was beginning to think I might be a winter person. I think I just enjoy the coziness of what winter and snowstorms bring, with fires and their warm glow and the ability to layer on extra clothes, coats or blankets when you are cold. When you are too hot, there isn’t much you can do (at least in public!), and I have always tended to run a “little too warm.”
So, summer has fully arrived (as of the time of this writing) and I am deliriously ecstatic. Over the years, I have taken those fun personality, color, and wardrobe tests that tell you what “season” you are and I have always fallen into the summer category. At least here in the Rockies, I can fully immerse myself into being a summertime girl. And summer leads into fall, which is my next favorite season! I hope everyone is finding ways to enjoy summer as I am.