The heat has arrived. Some plants and people thrive in this sun; others scorch and wither. Early mornings offer little reprieve from the broil, and the nights are heavy with humidity. This is prime pool season, prime drink-from-the-hose season, prime ice-cube-on-your-forehead season.
These are the dog days of summer—a phrase that comes from the rise of the dog star Sirius, who peeks over the eastern horizon just before the sunrise. Ancient astrology associated the appearance of Sirius with drought, fever, bad weather, and bad luck. Maybe so, but for us these days are equally intertwined with a kind of careless fun that can only be had when the cold–the huddling, the bundling, the turning inward and away– seems an impossible ache of a distant past. There is something about the cold that makes us shrink. But the heat—if you stand in it long enough to sweat your shirt through—will make you want to stretch your legs and shed your clothes and indulge in being alive.
Whether or not you know where the phrase “dog days of summer” came from, you know exactly what it means. You can feel the arrival in the sweat on your back and hear it in the rising buzz of insects in the cattails.
All That Moves 