“Seasonal Lag” and the Quick Flip to Fall

This is an adaptation of my weekly newsletter, Adventures Big & Small. If you want to receive emails like these, click here to subscribe.

Yesterday was windy. Cool. Dry leaves were piling up on my office porch, and across the valley there’s a maple almost entirely yellow already.

But today it will be 80 degrees, and I’ll forget all about this feeling that summer* has passed me by.

I learned in a book about gardening that there’s a phenomenon known as “seasonal lag,” which is the gap between the longest day of the year and the hottest day of the year.

Here in coastal California, that gap is pretty large — and I think it’s why summer always seems to end so abruptly for me. The days are quickly shortening, the sun sitting lower every day, the light slanting toward that moody winter vibe.

But we don’t really notice because it’s warm. We’re eating fresh tomatoes for at least another month. And by then, it’ll be getting dark before we eat dinner. We’ll be waking up to frost. Or to a super El Niño rainstorm.

Summer in our family has been like those tomatoes, overflowing the little basket we take out to the garden most days. It has been full in the best way.

Creeks and beaches and salads and squash and a big family trip to the mountains.

Work has been similar. Challenging, inspiring, a bit all-consuming. I’ve been going hard in the woodshop, building the last frames of the year. I’ve taken more family sessions than any year prior. I photographed an entire wedding on film.

Last night after dinner, I sat down hoping to organize my personal photos from the summer, but the “Film Dump” folder was simply more than I could tackle before bed. That folder (or my neglect of it) is a proxy for how much free time I’m finding. And it’s been accumulating disorganized film scans since April.

So instead, I’m just flipping through those photos at random, feeling nostalgic already, trying to add some clarity to what has felt like a total blur.

I started this letter knowing that it was going to be hard to finish because, for weeks, my mind has felt like that overflowing tomato basket where the things I want to say are piling up so fast they simply fall out of the basket.

But the truth is, none of what I have to say is important enough. Not as important as going for a hike this morning to find some silence or delivering this wedding gallery in the afternoon or even making tomato sauce with my daughter for dinner.

So…until next time
– David

* P.S. If you’re in San Francisco you might be thinking “but our summer just began” — which is why I added some easy Inspiration Sessions in the city, timed to your actual summer.