A Dysfunctional Relationship with Summer

It seems to me that most of us in La Pine spend about eight months per year dreaming about summertime.  I’m not too much of a cold-weather wimp, because you can’t be when you live in a place that has a higher altitude than the pass at Government Camp (roughly 4200 ft for La Pine vs. 3940 ft for Government Camp).  Luckily, however, the little kid inside of me still delights at the sight of snow, quite possibly because that same inner child hopes that with the white stuff, might also come a day off from school.

Yep, most of us here are pretty cold-weather hardy, but personally, when it comes to summer, I can’t decide if I love it or hate it.  That’s right I said it, and here’s why…

• The Skeeters!!  I’ve lived in some pretty swampy places in my life, including Florida, but this has got to be the toughest place I’ve ever run into when it comes to dealing with mosquitoes, no kidding.  The biggest mystery to me, however, is where exactly do they come from?  I’ve always heard that standing water or being in the vicinity of a somewhat swampy area is the prerequisite for breeding mosquitoes.  There are neither in the vicinity of my house, aside from the Little Deschutes that is roughly 1500 yards away (that’s fifteen football fields; I just measured it), which is not exactly right around the corner. Nevertheless, they’ll still pretty much just carry you off from my yard if you’re foolish enough to walk out there unprotected.   And other than dousing myself with seemingly toxic chemicals every time I step out, I’d love to hear what alternative methods are being deployed to deal with the little buggers.

• The Heat!  Ok, I just said I’m not a cold-weather wimp, but I totally admit to having just about zero tolerance for temperatures above 75 degrees.  The sun to me seems intent on both overheating me to a miserable extent while simultaneously sucking the very life-force out of me.  Nope, you won’t be finding me “laying out” anytime in the near future.   And although we really don’t have to deal with long periods of super hot weather here, those days in mid July when temps crack into the nineties, or worse, I’m not a happy camper.

• Having said that about the heat, here’s another strange irony that occurs every summer… Every morning, because I’ve opened all the windows in my house during the night, it’s like 50 degrees (or less) inside when I wake up and I don’t dare turn on the heat if I am to have any chance of being comfortable by 4:00 that afternoon.  Because of this phenomenon, I freeze my keester off more in the summer than I ever do in the winter! 

Ok, ok, I’m not even going to start in on the great billowing greenish-yellow clouds of pine pollen we’ve witnessed this year (and every year) or the this-or-that other thing that I could moan about.  I won’t, because it’s summer I have a dysfunctional relationship with, not La Pine.  As a matter of fact, when I think about it, it’s summertime in La Pine when I can step out on my deck at night, take in a deep breath and smell the sweet fragrance of the trees while staring awestruck at the sight of a crystal clear sky full of stars. It’s summertime when the flowers come out and deer grace my property by just showing up.  It’s summertime when I can go on great hikes through the forest with my dog and it’s summertime when I really do have the most fun.  I said that I sometimes can’t decide if I love summer or hate it, but in the end, I have to count myself among those who dream about summer during the winter while never wishing that I were in the middle of a snowstorm in August.