Ranger Holly

August is my favorite month of the year. It surpasses my birth month of December because I don’t like to be predictable and because I grew up in the Adirondacks where August was the last bastion of summer.

Each year, I go full tilt in August. You know, ice cream for dinner, a vacation and impulse purchases. The whole nine. I channel the grasshopper of Aesop’s Fable – just living for the moment and not worrying about the future. If you’re thinking, “God, what is she talking about now?” here’s the link to the story and a link to the cartoon version if you don’t feel like reading. And here’s a link to my full August explanation post.

This year I don’t have any impulsive plans or plans that have me living up on the high wire – YET. I guarantee you now that I have put this in writing this month will send me for a delightful loop. I’m leaving room for those things to happen. Serendipity has always been good to me.

I like celebrating August because it reminds me of childhood and how fun it was to live in the mountains. I played soccer for my high school team, so soccer tryouts were in August and I loved being back on the field with my friends after a summer apart. I remember I worked a summer job with some of my teammates one year as hotel housekeepers and we would have a lot of fun goofing off the whole day. And the year I was a senior, my friend Erin and I were cleaning rooms together and I will always remember that as she was making the bed she asked me who I thought would be team captains. I’m laughing now because that was our biggest worry and our biggest dream at that time. I wanted to say, “I really hope it will be us!” But, I didn’t want to be a jinx so I think I said maybe this person or that person. Then we were named captains just like we were secretly dreaming and we were beyond excited for that.

I can also picture watching the sun set beyond the mountains from the front porch. Listening to the brook that passed by our house and the wind in the aspen trees. There was such a peacefulness at my home in the mountains that I have never discovered anywhere else.

I loved growing up there in those woods, so I think that is the feeling I am always trying to recapture in August. There was just an ease in the air and in my life that I seek to reclaim at all times but especially in August.

These memories are inspiring my August this year. I am going to be reading The Chronicles of Narnia, sitting in front of the fan with Buttercup, occasionally eating ice cream for dinner, wearing cutoff shorts, going to the beach as much as I possibly can and definitely listening to country music all month long. (Thanks to you know who you are for my country music obsession and I hope you read this. My Spotify algorithm will never be the same.)