There’s an undercurrent of urgency to summers in Buffalo. A low, humming frequency that propels us into perpetual motion to fit it all in while we can. That Mother Nature is one smart cookie, lengthening the days for us like she does to allow more hours for whiling and basking and roaming. It’s all very exciting if we allow it to be.
I like to get up early on warm mornings and drape myself half asleep onto my bicycle. When the sun is just barely up and still soft, saving its baking rays ’til later, I’ll wind around the neighborhoods to see what’s blooming, who’s had a bender and the newest things being built.
The streets are still and quiet, before the lawn mowers, kid shrieks and plate-rattling bass arise to pierce my thought bubbles. In the cool air damp with dew, it feels like I’m getting away with something, discovering a reverent calm that others miss by sleeping in (especially before dialing in for a workday).
People are also reading…
If there’s one to be had, I’ll ride to a farmers market. Sometimes to shop for practical things like groceries, sometimes to just fart around and socialize, and most often to peer over every table with a coffee in hand looking for treasures. The good stuff you quite literally can’t find anywhere else—fruit, flowers and veggies so fleeting they have the exceptional power of making me feel like I might just have my act together when I happen to catch them in time.
Forbidden, early, wild things like nettles, ramps and fiddleheads. Ombre red radishes with the greens still lively and attached. Strawberries that haven’t seen the inside of a refrigerator. Elderberries too fragile for grocery store appearances. Tomatoes so big and “ugly” and heavy with its unmistakable umami juice they just need a steak knife and some good salt to enjoy. I’ll fill a pannier carefully with to-go goods, eat what won’t travel and ride like a gleeful, 12-going-on-42-year-old madwoman home with my haul.
After we ride, we snooze. Sun and fresh air and blood moving will always make a tiny siesta seem like the only good idea in the immediate term. I am a professional napper, and in my quack-expert opinion, there are two kinds of soul-resetting summer naps. First: the wet-dry-wet nap, whereupon you spend enough time in cool water, wild and unheated to drop your core temperature, then sprawl out on a sun-warmed deck/dock/rock and drift off until you’re baked awake and reminded to dive back in. And second: a chaise or hammock in the shade with a consistent breeze to shoo away the mosquitos, preferably after enjoying a generous plate of grilled things.
Afternoons are for ice cream, a carefully rationed favorite in my “middle school or middle aged” spectrum of summertime bliss. It doesn’t even need to be good; it just needs to be outside, where melted rivulets can drip onto a surface you don’t need to mop. Scoop it up from an earwig-inciting, elusive truck; your own freezer; a festival hut; or a gourmet frozen dairy treat purveyor from which you were stupid/smart enough to reside within walking distance—just go get some, calories be damned. It’s just the fuel you need to scoot through an afternoon of adulting behind a desk or behind a lawn mower.
As the have-tos wind down, I head to the waterfront for a sunset picnic. “Picnic” is a term I use broadly—it could be a cute charcuterie board with all the right meats, cheeses and accoutrements; a pair of killer subs to go; or a collection of bits and ends from the fridge and pantry packaged into whatever containers are clean (we call this “tapas” to reframe the random in our house). A few beers or another special-feeling beverage, like fresh mint iced tea, are a must.
Looking west as the sun dips down, my shoes come off to walk into the water, drink in hand. I’ll paint my face with the warm orange of the sun sinking low over the lake, let the undulating waves regulate my breath and exhale gratitude for a full, fleeting summer day.
