Summer recently showed up, if only briefly, on a weekend no less, when the temperature reached 80 degrees. It was warm and comfortable, except that the snowpack hasn’t melted and the riverbanks and dams can’t hold all the runoff if we have a heat wave. The governor has declared a state of emergency and anxiety over potential fires has been replaced by potential floods. It’s always something.
Montana summers are often an anxious time. We wait for them. Begin wearing shorts and gardening on partly cloudy, 50-degree afternoons. Wait some more. Religiously check the 10-day weather report and discuss it with our colleagues. Keep waiting. And then cram everything we possibly can into the 10 to 12 weeks of potential warmth. But don’t count on a sunny Fourth of July. It rains, hails or snows on every single one (that’s not true, of course, it’s just a way to temper our expectations).
When I worked as a trash man during the summer in Yellowstone National Park, the hot sun was even more fleeting. One year, it never really came at all. I awoke to snow on my porch in August, a bad way to start a day collecting garbage. But somehow, I still tell people that don’t live here that summers in the Northern Rockies are better than theirs. That’s especially true here.
It’s pretentious, I know. But it’s part of the reason I rarely leave the state this time of year. Where else would I want to be? What if I miss one of those 88-degree days on the lake? What then? There may not be another one for the rest of the season.
Earlier this year, Kalispell was named the sixth-cloudiest city in the United States. That didn’t surprise me, since local stores sell T-shirts advertising Whitefish Mountain Resort with the tagline, “Got Fog?” We wear them as a way to brag about our ability to ski without being able to see the snow in front of us. Missoula, where I went to college, also made the cloudy list (No. 10). I’ve also lived in Spokane, Wash., and Eugene, Ore., two perennially cloudy cities, especially during the winter months.
Apparently there are real risks to all these dreary days. Vitamin D deficiency – often caused by the lack of sunshine – has been blamed for everything from joint pain to higher blood pressure. So, wearing shorts and flip-flops on a rare sunny April afternoon is probably a good thing. Getting outside as often as possible in the summer is, too. And most of us do.
In the Flathead, we celebrate just about everything in the summer, and we do it outside. We honor Cajun food and huckleberries and local beers nearly every weekend. On weekdays, there are street parties and gallery nights and farmers’ markets. It’s all an excuse to gather in the sun.
So when it rains, it is often quite literally raining on our parades. But when the sun shines on a clear day, and the entrance to Glacier National Park is visible and the waters are warm enough to swim in, there is no better place to live.
The anticipation can make us anxious. Summers often arrive late. If they’re too hot, we have fires. If they’re too cold, then we talk about the remaining snowpack. But those few weeks of sun are always worth the wait. Someone just said it was supposed to be nice this weekend. Partly sunny, and 70 degrees. That’s a relief.