From a Journal - June

By Callie Stephenson

I am afflicted by a certain nostalgia. It’s a hot muggy night, barefeet in damp grass, and the smell of skin slicked with sweat. It is summer. Denim shorts and pine needles mixed with sweet, heavy lake water. It is Americana: all fireworks and sunscreen grease. The voices of people around me saying how absurd I am to revel in the heat of the evenings, and the comfort I find in the deafening accumulation of a dozen fans whirring at different pitches. It is my contempt for air conditioning coupled with full body resignation every time I enter a building that has been pumped full of that delicious, refrigerated air.

But, one symptom of my ailment is shame from a legacy carried by the romanticization of capitalism and disregard for environmental protection while still holding nature to the holy standard of a chapel. It’s the same nostalgic sickness that spurs love for my truck and my emotional connection to the freedom and safety it has come to symbolize. While the feeling is sweet, I’m over aware that it is fueled by oil and the fabricated history of an infallible empire that is only now coming to realize its gold was brass all along, and it’s impossible to escape hubris.

Even so, this feeling settles in my stomach with the persistence of a mosquito bite and when I let myself succumb to the present, the gentle ache reminds me I am here, and human, and beautiful things unfold.

The evening was built on the looming summer vacation feeling from formally resigning from overnight shifts, and lavender sunset light. To waste some of my accumulated sick time I told my superiors I had to leave early and cater to my mind.

By 8:30 I was in the driver’s seat of my car with the windows down, stripped down to my undies. The air rushing through was blow dryer warm and smelled like Russian Olives. I sang with the radio, to the sky and the season, and parked by the reservoir outside of town to eat dinner.

From the top of the truck I watched the sun drop. With the smoke from fires spanning Montana to Arizona, the sky was cast in dusty gold and pink, and the mountains were a soft amethyst. Cars passed and fragments of music streamed behind like frayed edges. Through the open windows choruses of voices sang along to pop ballads.

Darkness crept closer, and the strangers around me began to leave, so I scrambled down the hillside to the edge of the water with a flannel pulled over my shoulders.

The reservoir was high and gentle waves lapped through the branches and leaves of partially submerged trees, combing through the knots in the bark. I slipped my flannel off, folded my glasses on top of the shirt, and carefully edged onto the brassy talus below the surface. The water was warm, still holding heat from the daytime sun, and I dipped my head below the surface.

When I emerged, goosebumps raised on my arms, my hair was tangled like the curls of honeysuckle vines, and my skin smelled of bitter leaves and minerals. I pulled my shirt back over my damp limbs, grabbed my glasses, and scrambled back up to the car.

Even though I was cold, I drove the hills leading home with the windows down, moving through cool valleys and puddles of air with different tastes of summer pooling and rippling in the breeze. The season’s past and my present were a palimpsest of cut grass, cat tails, roses and lilacs, skunk and pine smoke.