End Of Summer...*

Summer is always a bittersweet time in my year. I don't like intense heat, but it's a break from the seemingly never ending cold of New England. I'm not great with women and seeing them strut around in less than nothing is a painful reminder of that, but nothing beats scantily clad women walking around all over the place. (Except NAKED women, of course!) Hey, I'm a straight guy, staring at women is built into my DNA. Now, summer is coming to a close and to be quite honest, I look forward to it. My favorite season is Autumn after all, so I just take the end of summer in stride.

Right around this time, though, a very specific memory comes to mind. It's back from when I was in college in Vermont. This was during a time in my life when I was still just a city boy getting used to the cultural shock of living in a rural environment. Instead of going home for the summer, I volunteered to stay at the college and work for the summer in the computer labs to help the Summer Language programs with their IT issues.

Normally, when someone thinks about Vermont they think of nothing but miles & miles of snow and cold weather. Take it from me, you wouldn't be too far off. But during the summer (short as it is up there), it's like a whole other world. Almost like something out of a fairy tale. Personally, I hated it. I missed the sounds and rhythms of the city. The honking horns, the blend of different foods cooking in the air, the people yelling.. all of it.

One night, I was walking back to my dorm after my shift, and taking my usual shortcut through a field when I spotted something in the almost waist high grass in front of me. The only way I could describe it was that it looked like the grass was sparkling. At first, I thought I was imagining it. I kept walking and I saw it again. The grass was sparkling!! I stopped dead in my tracks and just watched. When I stopped moving, I noticed that the lights were moving and blinking on and off. That's when my brain kicked the awe & surprise out and I realized what I was seeing: fireflies!

In my whole life, I had NEVER seen a firefly. I stayed in that spot watching the fireflies for a full ten minutes before they drifted away. Looking back it seems kind of stupid, but at the time it was a very magical moment for me. That moment is when I got my first real appreciation for nature. If the non urban world can come up with something that beautiful... there might be something to it. And if I recall properly, later on that week, I met my first girlfriend.

Every year when summer ends, that memory comes to mind. Interesting, huh?

* This post was written for Awesome Annie's Rockin' Art Show. Check it out. You might learn something!