Summer Daze

I open the car door and step out into the heat.  Even though it's after midnight the humidity is so high it feels like the air is sitting on my chest, leaving me damp. 

It smells like the sea.  That salty mix of sand and decomposition unique to Florida mangroves.  It's a slap in the face.  I am no longer in a place where the air smells fresh and clean, filtered by miles of forest.  Every time I go to New Jersey I wish there was a way to bottle up that smell.  

I've never cared for the smell of the ocean.  The salt and rotting fish smell, seaweed toasting in the sun.  There is beauty in the sea I cannot deny, but I would choose a lake every time.  The smell of fresh water is comforting to me.  It smells like my childhood.  Swampy decay, rotting leaves, and lily pads.  It smells brown and green compared to the blue and beige of the ocean.  As I lug my suitcase through the gate into my patio my soul is already craving the green mountain lake of my youth.

I turn the water on to shower off the filth of travel.  As it heats up I am bombarded by the smell of chlorine.  It is such a jarring change from the sulfurous well water I've grown accustomed to during my vacation that I turn the water off and climb into bed dirty.  Grime seems like a better option than bathing in pool water.

In New Jersey, I would drift off to sleep to the sound of crickets and bullfrogs so vast in number that they drown out the sound of the pedestal fan in my room.  Now I am jolted by the rocket launching sound of my central AC kicking on and off and the periodic sound of cars coming and going and doors slamming.  The darkness in the mountains is complete.  No street lights or late night travelers.  Here I watch the light track across my room, through the blinds, as cars go by.  The artificial orange street light seeping through the slats make my room glow.

I am trapped back in my routine of waking early for work.  I can tell the days have grown shorter because the sky is barely brightening up at the horizon when I leave my house at 6:15 AM.  Summer is ending and it leaves me yearning for those summer days I spent in the woods, by the lake, in the mountains.  

I can fake myself out when I kayak the Loxahatchee river.  If I close my eyes and breath deep I can smell that same smell. I can hear the leaves rustling in the breeze and the cicadas buzzing.  The canopy of the trees and the wet earth ground me.  In that moment I am home again.