As the heat disappears from the year and the evenings cool and shorten, I begin to set aside my summer things.
Whether it be the shorts I never wore, the hat that didn’t see the sun, or the gin that I forgot I had, I will pack them lovingly away, patting them as the doors close, with the simple phrase, “maybe next summer.”
Another raft of morsels that go back into storage is the pinkened vocabulary that we lazily draw upon during the summer months. As the bitter darkness of winter recedes, we select, as if at a delicious buffet, on the idioms that we roll around under the blazing sun. Heat, humidity, shower, and barbecue all bring us back into touch with the great outdoors. Mower, secateurs, ice cream.
But my favourite, by some considerable stroll along a hay-stacked country mile, is petrichor. For many years, I had known what petrichor was, but to the best of my recollection, I only had a name for it in recent seasons.
For the uninitiated, petrichor is that wondrous aroma that is to be sampled when there has been rain after a long period under the baking sun. To me, it smells like a long, satisfied sigh. It is the scent of the scorched earth, curling its baked toes in delight as the sweet liquor seeps into the cracks, turning the brittle, dust-orange clay to a deep spongy brown. Petrichor is the joy as roots, shrunken and bronze, reach forth, drink and become yellow-green, green. It is the squeak of the grasses, as they push heavenward once more, bright and verdant, in a celebration of the chance to swirl around surprised ankles and sated hooves.
But I guess most of all, petrichor is the presence of balance and glorious seasonality, the slow beating quadrumvirate of the mother earth. It is the promise of renewal and the warning of passing. The water cycle begins again, and in its surety, the hot ground sighs. The summer rains speak quietly of transitory circles and the privilege that is the consciousness of the journey.
As summer passes, it will return, and the earth will welcome it with a sigh.
