The elements

I have cottage logs going back to July 6th, 2001 when I first took possession of this place. And you know that cliché, that all Canadians talk about is the weather? It’s true. It’s either too hot, too cold, too dry, or too wet. When we are having a particularly (insert wet/hot/cold/dry here) summer, I go back to the logs to see what was happening on the same day a year or ten ago.

Guess what?

We HAVE had wet summers like his before. There was one summer it was so wet and cold, I didn’t get into the lake until August. Last year, however, I was complaining about no rain, about it being too hot to sleep at night.

Wah wah wah! (baby crying emoji here)

This year is ridiculously wet. No doubt. I think I have mushrooms growing INSIDE as well as out! Now that I live up here and need to to laundry and I don’t have a machine, I hand wash a lot of things. It is taking days and days to dry my hanging clothes because of the moisture in the air. And when it has been warm enough to swim, my bathing suit needs about a week to dry out.

And then think of the enormous forest fires out west. The B.C. interior is in crisis. Before that it was Fort McMurray and area in Alberta. We are crying for the rain to stop, and they are dying for rain.

Guess what? It could be us. We live in an enormous forest called Muskoka-Georgian Bay. And though I admit we’ve had wet/hot/cold/dry summers in the past, one thing that has changed is the intensity of storms. I don’t remember so many days of thunderstorms before. On every day that it has rained, I’ve heard thunder somewhere in the distance. Recently there was a huge storm just north of me where it hailed and hailed and the wind blew and trees fell and cars were dented by hailstones… THAT’S what’s different and scary. One lightning strike could set OUR forest on fire.

Umm, I’m not sure what this post is about, really. Except that even though we seem to be whiny Canadians who talk about the weather year round, I think it’s important to be citizen weather watchers. Citizen reporters year after year so we can add data to the whole climate change story.

Too earnest? Whatevs. The sun’s out, so that’s a good thing! A swimming day at last!

See Elements Album on Flickr