Edmontonians, soak it up! For a limited time only we are offered crystal blue skies, deep colours of foliage, and the option of leaving our jackets at home. Summer has swung around to us once again! The sun is still up in the sky when we get home from work. Isn’t that great?

I believe I have previously made known my enthusiasm for the warm season. It still holds. I continue to talk to ladybugs and marvel at the specter of sunlight dancing on emerald leaves. I carry on my conversations with feathered friends and daydream as billowy white clouds drift across the sky.

Summer calls me outside; that’s why I love it. In my childhood, I had a rambling trail that I played upon. Once school had let out I was out there almost every single day. There were lions under the fallen logs, parrots sweeping across the sky, and monkeys in the trees. Not really – I grew up in small town Alberta – but summer opened up my imagination to that world of fancy. It still does, but in different ways.

It begins when the snow starts to melt; really melt. The puddles embrace reflections of their environments and throw sparkles of sunlight as they tinkle down the drains. This holds the promise of warmth. Later along the path, the call of returning geese is heard in the still mornings. Life returning. Behind that, the smell of sap starting to run in the trees can be perceived. Then, we notice the days are stretching out and the sun is warmer. The bugs return. The blossoms are on the trees. It builds and builds, revealing one little wonder after another until one morning we wake and the symphony of summer has burst through our windows until we are compelled to chase its notes through the streets and parks of our city.

I sound terribly soppy, I know.

Summer just brings me back to my childhood again and again. The exaltation of my youthful summers is remembered as the blossoms begin to open. Winter holds its mystery too as we watch the beauty of death sweep over the land. The wonderful thing about death is that it makes way for something to be born again.

I love summer because, like everything, it must die. Its beauty is transitory and fleeting. We have to hold every moment because it’s one moment closer to the end. We never know when the white blankets will sweep over our landscape and leave us with bare trees and grey skies. Would we love summer with such fervour if it lasted through the year?

Each year, summer dies to be born again. We have a season of rest and renewal in which we gather our might to burst forth and be re-born; to celebrate this all too brief world and then to leave it. We have our time in the sun and then we’re gone and that’s exactly as it should be.

Keri lives in Boyle Street.