Heat Remedy #2

Contemplate the weather. Drift with the season.

We've had two summers in one. At the start of June the cool temperatures and afternoon storms swooping down over the Northwest reminded me of summers in Germany: fragrant, rain-freshened, leafy and inspiring you to jaunt into the hills or follow the parks along the river.

Then with the force of a sledgehammer striking an anvil, one-hundred degree heat bludgeoned the valley and every urge was a desert instinct to hunker in the shaded hammock and watch the foothills flare in the sun. Read some Pavese, or Doerr's Four Seasons in Rome, or Calvin and Hobbes when Ada comes trotting up the hill and dives in beside me carrying her favorite book. Books, iced drinks, stories of past summers wading into the river as a boy to catch snakes and crawdads or a bucking ride on a plywood river board tethered to a tree trunk. And naps, of course. Anything to compliment our oasis of piled shadows under the lilac and maple, our languid fantasy that the hammock is a boat adrift on thin clouds in a weltering sky. Eleven consecutive days of one-hundred-plus highs (one day reached 110) matched the record set in the early 2000's.

Then the surprise of a couple more weeks of pleasant eighties and afternoon clouds bulking the stratosphere and evenings tussled with rain or wind storms. The dewey grassy smell of early mornings just before the sun ignites the treetops. The reward of a bicycle ride through slatted shadows of the neighborhood, or an evening walk up Hull's Gulch among the sage and bitter brush, the kestlings roving above the locust groves.

But now a heat wave has hunkered in again, with the real start of fire season. The sweet smoke of grass fires in the Owyhees curdles the air and ruddies the sunsets. We have no choice but to float the Boise River. We join our friends Nick and Hollis and their two young girls in renting a raft and riding the high water under leafy willows, charging the ferocious class one rapids with the girls shouting "full speed ahead!"  We take out at eddies, picnic under the cottonwoods, watch rainbow trout nick the surface as they snatch insects in the evening light. The water is bracing cold but the girls count up their courage and hold their noses before jumping in to their necks.

We, all of us, count up our courage.  Monday will come with its work and trudging and cursing in the heat and smoke, but we savor our Sunday believing that the more we enjoy the pleasantries of life, the less its hardships have hold of us.  Like dipping your head in water before crossing a sunbaked field, we soak in these river days for sustenance.

Heat Remedy # 1

Come home from futbol pasted in salt from running two hours under a scalding sun, and without showering or anything foolish like that, belly-flop right down into the kiddy pool, shins creasing the sides, water sloshing everywhere, your back taco-ed and your hips hard to the plastic floor.  Then pull your laughing disbelieving girl-child in with you, just to show her how medicinal it is.  Then have her go inside and bring the radio out, then return for a cold one from the fridge because she forgot that part.  

Then tune in some cumbia on one of the Latin stations out of Caldwell or some dub and dancehall on Radio Boise and start up a game of Wiffle Ball with the girlchild standing to bat in the kiddie pool while you pitch from the shady spot under the patio umbrella where the table serves to both hoist your beer and deflect views of your near-naked self from the neighbor woman next door who couldn't care less anyhow but you're trying to be somewhat discreet because your shorts are white and wet yet you can't go inside to change because that'd alert the wifey to all the fun you're having making a soggy delirious mess of the yard and your Sunday afternoon as the girlchild belts one whistling past your ear and your slipping lunge and she's rounding second, dauntless and scampering to third, then incredibly, ill-advisedly heading for home, daring you to throw it which you do, with real zing because the little tart has upped the ante, her long legs flowing and her laugh tripping you up as the white ball kisses the air next to her shoulder and she jumps with both feet into the home-base pool shouting safe! safe! safe! -- an inside the park home run,  an inside the heart home run, the crowd going wild as you mob her at the plate with kisses.