Folks from other places often wonder how we can tolerate summer in Arkansas. It’s hot.
It’s humid. Mosquitoes bite, and ticks and chiggers and other mean-and-nasties. And
snakes … snakes are out in summer, too.
It’s a season out to get you if ever there was one.
Arkansans love summer, nevertheless. And why shouldn’t we? Summer is a three-month
holiday (vacations, yes; school, no)—the only season that can make such a claim. It’s a
bright, sunny season, a get-together-with-family-and-friends season, and most of all, a
get-outside-and-have-fun season.
As spring wanes and summer paints the landscape with buttercups and orioles, we feel an
ever-growing urge to stay out of the house and in the outdoors. Summer days are the
longest of the year. Dawn comes early, dusk comes late, and there’s lots of time in
between to cavort with Mother Nature.
Some of us go fishing. Some enjoy a swim. Some float a river or hike a trail. Some sit
and watch the hummingbirds, symbolic of the season. And everywhere, folks are
gardening and enjoying the bounty of home-grown vegetables summer brings.
Summer stirs the senses in special ways. It smells of honeysuckle, rain showers and
fresh-cut hay. It sounds like whippoorwills, locusts and the low rumble of a late-
afternoon thunderstorm. It tastes tart like fresh tomatoes, hot like backyard barbecue and
greasy-good like fresh-caught, just-fried catfish. It feels jungle sticky and creek-bottom
cool, and it looks a lot like rainbows, campfires and sunfish.
It is during this season, the season Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called “that beautiful
season,” when we fully realize the significance of the name we have given our homeland:
“The Natural State.” For this, we celebrate. For this, we give thanks.
