Summer clouds

If we if we could see the clouds from the other side where they lie in billowy glory, bathed in the light they intercept, like heaped ranges of Alps, we should of be amazed at their splendid magnificence.

We look at their underside, but who shall describe the bright light that bathes their summits and searches their valleys and reflected from every pinnacle of their expanse.

Author unknown

Summer is a special time of year as far as memories.   Who can ever forget the exhilaring feeling at the beginning of summer when schools lets out?   Summer has always meant freedom from many wearying and burdensome  months spent in classrooms staring out the windows in boredom.  Memories of summer vacation, swimming in a mill pond, fishing in a pond way out in the country and heading to Myrtle Beach for a truly wonderful couple of days At the ocean in the days before high-rise hotels and condos stretched along the coast for 30 miles.  I don’t even recognize the place today compared to back then..

But summer has always been very hot and humid in the South,  and it’s getting hotter by the year as the planet warms and the climate changes.   When you’re young, you can tolerate it much better.  I remember sweating buckets mowing lawns in  the intense summers  of my youth in New Orleans.  But physically, it was doable, even tolerable.  Besides, that was how I made my spending money and saved up a modest amount for college.

Now when I do venture out in these sweltering days of July  in Charleston, I feel smacked by the heat whenever I get out of my air-conditioned house or car.

There’s something about summer also that sets it apart from the other seasons, and that’s the massive,  billowy white clouds float overhead or congregate in towering masses on the near horizon.  When I’m driving toward them they seem so far away, but are they?  The cumulus clouds  of summer just make me feel good.  My imagination takes flight to those far off pavillions in the sky.

At our Waterfront Park the other day I stared at the clouds in amazement, as if I’d never seen such a grand spectacle.  Summer days in the future may become too hot to bear,  but as long as there are billowing clouds, there will be memories of what once was.