It’s sunny and clear outside, the sun burning bright with the desperate intensity of late August.
Summer always speeds up at its end, pushed by the crescendo of cricket song and the frenetic twitters of late-nesting goldfinches. Like a panicked child trying to pack everything into the last week of vacation, late summer seems harried and hurried, lacking the languid leisure of June and July, when the year was young.
It’s been strange to read Facebook updates from my former colleagues at Keene State, who started classes today. My new classes at Framingham State don’t start until next week, after the last hurrah that is Labor Day, so I feel like I’ve been given a brief reprieve from back-to-school: one last week to make hay while the sun shines. All day today, it’s felt as if the crickets have been urging me not to waste a single precious minute.
Today’s photos come from the Desert Room at Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, where it’s summer all year long. For more photos from the Desert Room, click here. Enjoy!
Aug 29, 2012 at 8:54 pm
I am also a walking woman if you will. For me it’s the intimacy with my surroundings, the awareness of all that surrounds me is so refreshing. It’s a reminder that work and whatever is troubling me at the moment is not important, my connection with the people and the world I live in is.
I’m always surprised at how many people blow by me on their way to wherever they’re going while I stand in awe of the beauty before me. Is it that they don’t notice or are they just too busy to?
Sep 2, 2012 at 2:11 pm
I’m not sure what it is, Yok, but I notice the same kind of oblivion: not just in others, but in myself if I allow it! It’s too easy to focus on where you “have to be” rather than “how you get there.” That’s why I appreciate ANY sort of reminder to slow down and pay attention, and that’s what I’m getting out of Strayed’s book.