Late Summer in the North: Slow Things to Do as the Light Turns

Somewhere in August, the light changes its mind. The evenings cool first. There is a single yellow leaf, then another. Summer is not over; it has only turned to face the other way.

This is the season of keeping. The long days were for spending. These shorter ones are for gathering what the summer made, before the dark asks for it back. Seven slow things, while the grass is still warm at noon.

Birch Leaf

The last swim

Go to the lake once more, while the water still holds the warmth the air has started to lose. The first cold swim of the year is a different thing from the last warm one. Children remember which was which.

Children rarely choose the moment themselves, so a parent has to call it, the way you'd call last orders, and the lake does not mind being told it is closing for the year.

Pick for the winter

The blueberries are heavy now, the lingonberries reddening behind them. Gather more than you can eat in a sitting. A handful for the bowl now, the rest for the jar and for a grey day in November that has not arrived yet.

A child's handful goes in slower than an adult's, and stains the fingers the same deep colour either way, which is half the reason they keep coming back to the bushes.

Find the first chanterelle

Chanterelle Mushroom

The forest floor begins to offer mushrooms. Learn one well rather than many badly. A child who can name a single chanterelle owns a small piece of the woods for life.

Let the child carry the knife and decide, with your hand only there to stop a mistake, because the rule that matters is the noticing, not the cutting.

Press the last of the meadow

The flowers are fewer and the colours quieter. Keep a few between sheets of paper, somewhere flat and forgotten, for the months when nothing blooms.

Let the child choose which ones, even the slightly wrong ones, since the point of a pressed flower is what it asks you to remember, not how well it was picked.

Light the first fire

An evening will come that is cool enough for a small fire. You feel the year tip when you light it. The season of warmth indoors begins here.

Give the child something to do at the fire, feeding small sticks in one at a time, because watching a flame work is a different kind of attention than holding a phone, and they feel the difference even if they cannot say it.

Watch for the turning

Find the first tree to change, and name it. Visit it. Children who learn to notice the turn early are never ambushed by autumn; they walk out to meet it.

Children are better at this than adults, mostly because they have not yet learned to stop looking up.

Make something to keep

Drying Herbs

Jam, a bundle of drying herbs, a card of pressed flowers. Late summer rewards the hands that store, not only the ones that hold.

A child's jam jar gets labelled in their own letters; however, the spelling lands, and that label is half the reason the jar matters by February.

The light will keep shortening, a few minutes each day, all the way down to the dark. There is no hurry to meet it. The grass is still warm at noon, the berries are still coming, and the evenings still smell of water.

The current Seasonal PlayBook is a companion for exactly this point in the year. View →