It weighs on my chest, pressing downward with a force I never quite realized before. Each breath into my lungs feels slow, like I have to force the oxygen into my body rather than it just seeping in like normal. It’s heavy, this burden. The air is so thick it feels as though you are moving through water, almost needing your arms to move the moisture aside.
You think the air is thick and heavy? The water is even heavier. Each stroke with the paddle feels like I am enduring a weight lifting session. The weight of the air on the water compresses the pond and I feel like the water in denser than it was before. I don’t now if that’s a thing, but I do know that water always feel lighter in the crispy, cool air of fall and in the midst of the Vermont Rainforest July, that water is not moving!
But how awesome have the clouds been? Just sitting there, doing all kinds of crazy weird things but not moving at all. I tried to take a photo of the loon family on Woodard Reservoir the other day. 2-week-old babies came swimming by us between their parents in a very tight formation. In my attempt to photography them, all I got was stunning mirror reflection of the clouds and no loons at all.
At least the water is flat. Like glass, but not the dainty kind. The big thick glass. More like transparent aluminum. The kind that doesn’t shatter when you drop it or strike it with your paddle. The blade doesn’t fall into the water. It sinks, slowly. Like some kind of egg drop soup. I don’t enjoy egg drop soup…
Even the wind cannot make the water ripple, and so my canoe glides through the flat water slower than usual but just as sexy. Slow & Sexy. That is definitely how the water feels under the hull. Like I’m not in the water, but sitting on top of it. Moving forward, but slower. Giving me the opportunity to focus on all the small twitch muscles that are usually so overworked by thin water.
But it’s peaceful out here, while everyone hides in their air conditioning. I mean, granted that I am sweating about 25 strokes in and wondering why I thought paddling in the middle of the day was going to be a good idea. I mean, it’s water so it should be cooling, right? Yeah, not so much when the sun is simply boiling all of us. Like seriously, the air is so moist and the water in it so hot, it feels like we have just been cooked alive.
I worked my bartending shift at Baja on Sunday night and I want to give a huge shoutout to everyone who was has been working through this obnoxious heat. To the road crew teams out shoveling and paving as they are sandwiched between two brutal heat sources. To the restaurant teams who are sweating on the job even in the middle of winter. To the construction crews sweating to death on top of a roof, their feet probably on fire through their soles on top of the asphalt. To the farmers that don’t hesitate to tend to their crops and feed us even as they fight to keep their lettuce from frying in the hot sun.
Obviously, I am a winter girl.
I’ve been hiking the trails at dawn and dusk lately, transporting myself to the days where I’m skinning up the mountain. I can feel my body slipping into the same movement patterns, can almost feel my skins sliding up the mountain beneath me. Yes, I am that crazy girl that starts drylands training in July, exactly one month after my last day on skis.
I cannot believe it’s so hot that I’m dreaming about skiing already. And not just dreaming. I can feel my body making the movements. It’s not just being surrounded by the pure white of snow in such a high contrast to the lush greens of summer. I LOVE summer! I love the greens and exploring in the woods and hiking on the trails. It’s just that I am so damn hot that my mind is relocating itself to the cool days.
Last night we were all sitting in front of the fire at Marylou’s wondering why we would submit ourselves to the proximity of the pizza oven. But we all really knew. Because we are the children of winter and you just can’t keep us away from a good fire.
And so I am going to go home, sit in my beautifully air conditioned home, put on a nice thick sweatshirt, bask in the coldness and just think about winter. And snow. And skiing. Only four months of drylands training left to go.
Merisa Sherman is a long time Killington Resident, town lister and member of the Development Review Board, Coach PomPom and associate broker at Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty. She can be reached at merisa.sherman@sothebysrealty.com.
