Europe is, again, burning. Temperatures in central Spain and southern Portugal reached 44°C (111°F) this week. We have spent our days indoors, blackout shades drawn, cycling the air conditioning to stay comfortable. I am grateful to have the respite of modern convenience to ride this heat wave. Yet, it feels like an insult, to stay indoors, windows shut, in the dark in the middle of summer. To use an umbrella to protect not from rain but from dangerous UV rays.
Images of fires in Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey flood my newsfeed. (I won’t mention the dumpster fire happening across the Atlantic). “We are being cooked alive, this cannot continue,” said a mayor in northern Portugal, as three fires burned nearby his village.
Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world. Climate change has resulted in an increase in temperature of 2.3 °C (4.14 °F) compared to pre-industrial levels. To compare, an increase in average global warming between 0.8 °C (1.4 °F) and 3 °C (5.4 °F), will nudge the Greenland ice sheet past an irreversible tipping point, after which it will tumble into the ocean and raise ocean levels by a catastrophic seven meters(23 feet). Heat-related deaths in Europe have increased at least 30 percent in the last 20 years.
I am generally not someone who yearns for childhood or my younger days. Yet in this moment, a plume of grief hovers over me as I long for summers of the past, the ones that I spent almost entirely outdoors. Growing up, summers had a familiar rhythm, routine, and rituals.
Summer is an idea, a feeling as much as a season. It evokes dripping, sticky popsicles. The distant music-box melody of an approaching ice cream truck. Splashing in a pool or reading a book next to a babbling creek. Walking in the woods, watching sunsets from the porch. The sound of a screen door slamming shut, the slapping of flip flops on hot pavement. The smell of coconut suntan oil (SPF 2 . My god.). Gatherings around the grill, late night dance parties under a full moon. The nostalgic summer I long for includes those sights, sounds, and smells. They make up my summers growing up and into young adulthood.
I love warm weather, especially balmy nights. This heat wave is a different experience. In those lazy, hot summers of the past I was surrounded by trees, grass, and gardens — all elements that reduce the impact of the heat on a person. Researchers have reported on the health benefits of green spaces. Urban vegetation appears to exert a positive influence on mental health and well-being. Nowadays I heed the public health warnings against outdoor activities. The heat radiates from the buildings and sidewalks.
I woke at 6:00 this morning, just before sunrise, to open windows and allow air to circulate through our apartment. There was a faint smell of smoke in the air, perhaps from the several fires burning, which are also contributing to the poor air quality. For a few moments I sat out on the veranda, enjoying the fleeting early morning stillness of the city, before it roars awake with its insistent, nerve-shattering cacophony.
What is it, really, that I am longing? In my beloved book club in California, there was an ongoing joke that “it’s never just rain.” In other words, details were rarely random in works of great fiction. So, too, in mapping out your life’s landscape. A craving, an urge, or a tug is often a signal for something beyond the obvious. For now, sitting in the dim light of the apartment, I have time to consider the question.