A puff of warm air strokes my face, as I walk the ridge ten minutes from home soon after eight this morning.
There are mornings in August when I realise I should have left home fifteen minutes earlier to avoid the fast rising heat, but this is the penultimate day of September!
We’re closing the shutters again in the afternoon. It’s an “Indian Summer” everyone is saying–and there’s no end in sight. We’re grateful but a little perplexed.
The countryside has a pale arid beauty–fields are barren, the last crops lifted; trees are turning brown and losing their leaves.
I look up the expression “Indian Summer”.
“Indian”–it says–is a reference to native Americans and has nothing to do with the sub-continent.
That disabuses me–I had always assumed the other!
But is this–strictly speaking–an Indian summer?
Apparently there has to be a frost before you can call it such, which is why they usually occur in October or early November.
Anyway–in terms of weather, it is clearly a gift—to be enjoyed for as long as it lasts.
There is another–metaphorical–meaning of the phrase: a late blossoming, a rebirth, a renaissance and that can occur at any time of the year!
Robin Ellis 