Western Smoke

This little heat wave and how I've learned to love peak summer.

My brain doesn’t work correctly right now. At least not between the hours of 11 and 6. I’m not made for this weather. I’m not made for heat. I blame my genes. I’ve never loved this point of summer.

In the midwest where I grew up doing outside work, the temps were commonly 100 with 100% humidity. My brain shuts down in this heat. Still does. I can’t think clearly. My body is unhappy. My brain feels like hot asphalt with gum smearing across it.

When I moved west it all got a little better. It’s a dry heat as we like to say. Some years, like last year, we never really hit the hot stride. But others, like previous ones and this one, we get it strong. Hot wind. Dry. Everything dry baked. Like my mind.

I try to lean into it. Today I went for a run, thinking I’d beat the heat, but apparently I neglected checking my watch or the thermometer and found myself on a low forest ridge in full sun at 12:30 feeling like the blood was going to burst out of my face. Still three miles to go till water. I made it and sat cooling down and lapping it up for the next 15 minutes. I’m still light headed standing up even now a few hours later. But somehow the torture makes it better. The push. The challenge.

I don’t really hate summer. I love sunsets this time of year. I love long days and short nights and watching the stars in the western skies. I love the way the evening clouds look like pastel puffs. I love early mornings when the light is quieter than the morning birdsong. But this heat… oh this heat is killing me.

So right now it’s peak Saturday and I’m in the house in a shaded room listening to the new Sturgill Simpson, aka Johnny Blue Skies album. And it’s wonderful. He’s the best of the best right now, absolutely on top of his game.

I always marvel at how different humans are. There are people that strive with heat, and accept it for far more of the year. I’m no such person. But I love the cold. I love the sensation of being cold. In part, it's the same reason I don’t really like alcohol… I don’t like brain fog. And alcohol, like heat, makes my brain feel hazed, and makes it feel like a head rush when I stand up. That sensation isn’t one I enjoy.

Anyway, my blurry dog and I are on the couch looking for things to look at on the internet. He wants to watch Border Collie videos and I cede for while. Then fall asleep in a daze.

-

That was last weekend. Here we are days later. My brain just wasn’t working last week. Too many work projects. Too many personal projects. Just a jumble trying to get things done in the heat. But after tying some things together, wrapping up a few projects, something cleared in my brain, even if the heat still lingers.

It’s been a busy week in America, to say the least. I’ll spare the details. If you haven’t heard what’s going on, honestly, good for you, because it means you are living life beyond the digital sphere, and that is a good thing.

This last week in the midst a typical summer heat wave, I got to thinking about not thinking.

Yes, that makes no sense, but it did at the time. Here is the thing, as I touched on above. The heat seems to shut my brain down. Then, when I go submerge in the creek or even douse in a cold shower, everything begins to clear. There are happenings within the body that lead to changes in the mind that in turn make changes in the body. I can not claim to have any true understanding of how this complex system works, but it I can understand with clarity how it plays it out. It’s easy to witness.

But there is more I came across in my lack of understanding, a phenomenon I’ve been fascinated with since I was a kid… In music, what is it that makes certain rhythms and tones affect us so powerfully? And likewise, with regards to our vision, what is it that creates such an effect that different shaped horizons play so differently in our minds. These shapes, even more so than the sounds that enter our ears, are distant vagaries at best. And yet, powerful ones. A mountain ridge line climbing into the sky 40 miles away. A line of trees silhouetted by the setting sun. An expanse of rolling sage brush looming hills, seemingly wandering endlessly towards the edge of the earth away from us. What is it about these landscapes that make our mind react so differently? And to each of us, the expanses mean something else. My mom has always told me she couldn’t live in the mountains, because she feels too bound by them eating the horizon. For her, the expanse of an open plain with eye sight over a thousand miles of corn fields feels more comforting. For others the vast desert is bliss. For me, my favorite landscapes tend to have wide expanses fenced on the perimeter by looming mountains. For others still the landscapes of cities brings great comfort with their tall architecture creating asymmetry into the sky. There is no right answer, like a flavor, we each perceive it differently and with preferences all our own. But it’s a fascinating wonder to me, and one that I can think about endlessly with no conclusion. And likewise, music and sound can bring the same internal swells. Things that when you focus on them are somehow akin or related to flow state, though I generally think of that as a state brought on by an action.

In flow state I am typically in motion, though I think there is something even in the motion of moving my hands across a keyboard, when my mind is properly thinking and letting go at the same time, writing. But also in snowboarding. In running. In mountain biking. But also even in driving. Often in driving it is a combination of factors… smells of sagebrush coming in the windows, the sound of the song playing in the speakers, the horizon line ever changing it’s perspective within my eyes. Our eyes are part of our brain. This fascinates me. Our brain has a view, and likewise we can view our brain. So these changes in landscape don’t need a middle man. Our brain is taking that information in directly. What the hell?

It all is to say, it’s a fascinating life. When I find myself bogged down by the overwhelming large picture I think is going on around me, I try to step back and focus in on a few of the minor and simple details around me. For all the things out of our control, we can find appreciation and pleasures in some of the most simple fascinations. This week has been a reminder of all that for me. My brain has shut down. I’ve stepped back and quit trying to overthink anything because in this heat my mind simply won’t do its job at peak anyways. So as the smoke rolls in I’m going to watch. Maybe go take a few photos out in the western smoke. Stay tuned for more. I’m due to write another post in the next day or so.