Morning pleasantness in the South
I think the pure delight of morning on a warm southern day is one of the great pleasures in life. The other day we were inland and many of the thermometers were reading ninety degrees late in the afternoon.
It was warm, but as they are fond of saying out west, there was no humidity. By the time we got back across the White Oak River and within few miles of the water, the evening coastal breeze had picked up.
That night as I sat upstairs in my office, I eventually had to shut one of the windows because the stiff breeze was starting to lift papers from my desk.
Still we slept with most of the windows open. The pollen season is winding down, and the biggest challenge is the lack of rain which brings some dust with it.
The next morning as I walked out to get the newspaper, the sun was just coming up over the pine trees and that delicate morning light was falling on the last of the Azalea blooms.
The air was nearly a perfect temperature, Then in my mind's eye, I could see my mother working in her gardens on Pine Street before the sun's rays ever reached her. I could even remember the times after we took over the gardens when we worked hard and did a day's labor done before nine am.
It is the rhythm of the South. Life happens before the heat of the day. Sometimes people lose that rhythm in whine of today's heat pumps.
In fact as temperatures were dropping to near seventy that recent evening, I could hear a neighbor's heat pump struggling to a cool a home which the sea breezes could have done in ten minutes or less.
I have been on some forums recently listening to people who are afraid to move to the South because of the heat. They live in fear of the heat. If life is running from one air conditioned space to the next, I can understand their fear.
It is when you get away from the concrete, feel the grass under your feet, or the cool morning air on your face, that you really taste the South. There will be heat, but nature provides relief most days if you take the time to look for it.
The cool mountain morning air or a sea breeze in the evening makes the South especially inviting. Even much of the South not blessed with ocean or mountain air is a wonderful spot before the morning heat builds and bakes itself into the concrete.
To understand and enjoy that real South, you have to leave the house and drink in that morning air before the sun infuses it with heat.
Everyday that I get some of that morning air, I feel alive in a special way that connects me to those family members who carved out an existence years before the first heat pump whine was heard in the South.
