Chatham Nature Writing Blog: Prompt Entry #5

Open space and shade are what soothe my soul. Under the open sun of Pennsylvania summer a blistering blaze bothers me the way I used to pester my brother. It is nagging and relentless. One day, my brother grew up and socked me a good punch of retribution; sometimes it still hurts where his first punch landed on my arm. He is older by eleven-and-a-half months but was a small kid. The years he developed passed like a track star lapping me on the one-mile sprint. If he is heat, perhaps I am shade. We lead very different lives but have relied on one another just the same.

The star that bakes the front of my house must consider itself the foreman of a job unfinished. The bricks were fused six decades ago, yet the sun still dumps its warmth as if they needed to be fired today. The sand-water-gravel mixture blocks absorb and hold heat in a most impressive way. They remain warm to the touch hours past dark on a summer night and even during the coldest and clearest of January days.

I have read that in Ireland the temperature rarely goes above seventy or below forty on the Fahrenheit scale. I must be more Irish (and even less German) than American, despite being among the third Kirk generation to hold an American birth certificate. At that very moment when pleasant spring turns to annoying summer I feel my Germanic half disappear and my Irish-kin blood step forward. I long for shade, a massive shield above my house to filter sunlight is all I wish. I think if it could just cool down by six or eight degrees I would feel less sluggish, have longer energy and get more yard work accomplished. All of these might please my wife in various ways.

Shade. Oh for a bit of its gray, translucent gift. Envy creases my thoughts when I visit other homes. They sit down in a valley or just over a small glade. They rest in sliding degrees of shade from one hour to another and offer respite in cool, calm moments. Someone else’s yard holds an oak tree; along the driveway stands a lumbering maple or a proud, hefty pine. Each tree blocks the sun during the most intense hours of afternoon. It is not as if I desire to be an underground dweller. I only want shade. Cool. Comfortable. Direct. Dispersed. Soft. Serene. Shade.

I move about the exterior world grateful for open air. Winter walks are as fine as a summer stroll, and rain ranks high upon the things I adore. I don’t want to be inside. I want only to be out in open space and under shade. There is a pressure of tight spaces, not claustrophobia nor agoraphobia either. The tightness doesn’t originate from halls or classrooms or malls, but rather from the cramped neighborhoods, narrow city streets, bumper-to-bumper highways, and the confined spaces that impede nature. For as much as shade is desired, it is as if a house or store built in the way doesn’t offer real comfort. They are artificial shields.

That bit o’ me that feels Irish is at a crossroads. To one direction sits the blazing sun from which I turn my morning-blue eyes and squint under brow-salted sweat. The other casts the disappearing gray of day. I check both directions...