Summer is the time that humbles humans
- Bruce Stambaugh: The Rural View
- July 18, 2018
- 1647
With all of its positive and pleasant attributes, summer makes it hard to be humble.
We all want to get out and take full advantage of the sunny days filled with warmer temperatures and a wide variety of activities. We fling ourselves full force into each day, whether it’s for work or for play. We want to drink in every drop of sunshine, warmth and blue skies from dawn to dusk.
Toddlers, children and teens fill the local swimming pools, both public and backyard venues, while adults keep watchful eyes on the less careful youth. Construction workers bask in the fair weather, narrowing four lanes to one with an arsenal of orange barrels.
Lawnmowers hum morning, noon and evening throughout global neighborhoods. Contractors and excavators work sunup to sundown. Farmers are in their glory, beginning to harvest the fruits of their labor.
In many places the corn reaches far beyond knee-high by the Fourth of July. In others, stalks stood only inches tall, drowned out by the super wet spring and early summer rains.
Amber waves of grain really did roll in the wind until giant combines gobbled them up, or they formed rows of shocks like so many soldiers standing guard in Amish-owned fields.
Summer, however, has other, more drastic ways to get our attention with her weapons. Summer can humble us lowly humans in many ways. Think floods, wildfires, tornadoes, droughts, golf-ball-sized hail, record heat and humidity.
No matter our stature or station in life, we all succumb to those prevailing conditions. Summer humbles us.
For those unfamiliar with E.B. White’s beloved children’s classic, “Charlotte’s Web,” humility played a major role in the book’s plot and dialogue. The spider Charlotte wove “humble” into the web that served to save the life of the precocious pig Wilbur. She wanted a word that meant “not proud” as Wilbur’s crowning characteristic.
But humility has a second meaning beyond the social one. Humble implies a willingness to learn, and thankfully summer has much to teach us. The lessons are all around us in a more pleasing, useful and beautiful form than what disasters wrought.
Vegetable gardens and truck patches team with all sorts of goodies that nurture us. Tasty, homegrown sweet corn; luscious red tomatoes; green, red and yellow peppers; and tangles of zucchini are just a few examples.
Roadside produce stands and supermarkets tempt us with juicy peaches and vine-ripened melons. Generations ago indigenous Americans taught us to plant, tend and harvest these marvels.
For those nongardeners among us, we sniff and thump and feel and taste to select the best of the bunch, like our parents and grandparents did. The poor fruits and veggies pay the ultimate price.
Flower gardens are peaking with hollyhocks and zinnias and cultivated flowers too. Leafy hardwoods provide shade and refreshing coolness from the oppressive summer heat for humans and critters alike.
Wildflowers and wildlife also show their stuff. Dainty spotted fawns venture out on their own while Mom watches from more secluded spaces. Parent bluebirds and house wrens ferry insects, worms and berries to their youngsters, nearly as big as the adult birds.
Families crowd beaches and climb mountains on vacations, exploring new venues or returning to old haunts discovered by previous generations.
Where is humility in all of this? Using the educational definition, it’s merely a reminder of the responsibility of the created to care for the creation. That is about as humble as we can get.
To read more The Rural View, visit Bruce Stambaugh at www.thebargainhunter.com.