By Gary Schindler
Buffalo, NY – On the 13th of July we in Western New York entered the dead of summer. It was the first of 23 days that are, by the 30 year averages, the hottest of the year. It is the meteorological high tide of temperatures.
For those of us who pine for the cold winds blowing over the waters of Lake Erie, who long for piles of Lake Effect Snow, this is indeed the dead of summer, the dreariest days of the year.
Who can stand the sweltering heat, the humidity which drenches us on the shortest walk from house to car, the glare of the burning sun which scorches the unaware? Some revel in it. I endure.
I often proclaim that I do not live in Western New York for the heat and I feel sorely maltreated when the thermometer goes anywhere over 75 degrees.
There is no doubt that I get a little winter weary when March rolls around and it snows once again. An early April snowstorm can feel like a joke.
Still, give me a crisp cool morning, the sight of my breath before my face, a snow flurry before my eyes, a warm crackling fire and I am a man at peace with the weather.
What sounded so good in the spring fades quickly in this dead of summer. This year's plentiful rain and the sun only mean that the grass needs to be mowed in an unceasing round. Fortunately, I live in the vicarage at my church in Springville, so the young men who mow the church grounds bear the burden. Still, to seem them labor in the heat is difficult for me to gaze upon.
The promise of the first flowers struggling through the last patches of snow cheer the heart. Soon my heart is pounding and my back begins to ache as I bend over yet again and again to pull the miserable, pernicious weeds from between the flowers gloriously gracing the garden under the fierce radiance of the summer sun.
Mosquitoes attack in the summer's eve. Ants and spiders and things that take wing in the night sneak stealthily into my living quarters to annoy. The birds begin their strident cacophony long before most want to awaken, the cooing morning doves and the cawing of crows breaking the sweet slumber of a midsummer's night dream.
I guess some would say I complain too much. If it wasn't for these fleeting days of heat and mugginess how could I possibly appreciate God's great blessing of winter, the season that truly marks Western New York in the minds of our nation, as well as in our own imaginations?
When summer is gone and the frosts of autumn come, we know that the snows are not far behind. Who among us does not feel a little catch of excitement when we hear the words "Lake Effect Snow Warning?" Maybe this will be a big one, when the world is blanketed with a blessed hush of white, when there is for a short time pristine stillness and quiet.
There is the hope of a day off from school and a chance to say "No, I think I'm going to just make a pot of coffee, stay in bed and to heck with going out today."
At least, I tell my self, that the hours of daylight are already diminishing. We are on the sure and steady slide to snow.
The dead of summer has not long to last and it will soon be the coolest of seasons.
Listener-Commentator Gary Schindler is pastor of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Springville.
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