I Just Want To Be Outside in the Summer

The constant, antsy desire to go explore

Good morning!

Every year, as summer approaches, and the weather becomes consistently warm and sunny, and it’s bright by 5am and doesn’t get truly dark until 10pm, and everything smells sweet and new and refreshingly intoxicating—like someone doused this part of the hemisphere with all the best smells of nature at once—I begin to get uncharacteristically antsy and unfocused. All I can think about is being outside.

This has happened to me every year, ever since I can remember, like clockwork, in all types of settings: school, dance class, friend’s houses, airports, work. Even if I’m in a space that fulfills me in some way, I still feel this magnetic pull from the outdoors, taunting me to drop what I’m doing and go explore while the day is at its best and, quite frankly, while I’m at my best (I wilt by 9pm). It’s one of the reasons why a month went by without this newsletter in your inbox: I just don’t want to stare at a computer for another minute after doing so at work for 8+ hours every day.

This feeling has only magnified since I moved to Seattle, where summer in the Pacific Northwest is idyllic—low 80s, no humidity, light breeze, salty sea air, epic nature everywhere you look—and where people spend as much time as possible enjoying these fleeting, blissful months. And of course, it feels all the more urgent to be outside as the wildfire season becomes longer and more severe in so many areas of this region. Who knows how many months of “perfect” summer weather we’ll actually have?

Yet responsibilities and screens beckon us inside time and time again, ensuring tasks are completed, phone calls are made, meetings are productive, dinner is cooked, Instagram is scrolled, TV shows are watched, errands are run, and our lives are in order—without a second thought given to the complex and beautiful order of the natural world that makes our very survival possible. And then, if we do get outside, we’re compelled to fill it with something: a phone call, a podcast, a book, music, exercise. We get in the habit of ignoring the nature around us that begs to be noticed.

I’ve been guilty of this many times. Hours fly by as I become consumed with emails and writing assignments, and all the sudden, I look up and notice that the light has changed. Morning quickly became afternoon which quickly became early evening, and now there are just a few hours until bedtime. Another day passed, and I didn’t make much time to feel the sun on my face or notice how the chickadees have made a new nest in the tree in our yard. I barely got up from my desk, and when I did it was to eat a quick meal. Ugh. As much as I try not to let those kinds of days happen, they do, and I despise them. I’m not my happiest self when I don’t make time to get outside.

Our responsibilities and screens will always be there—they’re an enormous part of our lives—but I can’t help but feel like they’re less important than what’s happening right outside our window or down the block or in the mountains a few hours away. I’m pretty sure our purpose on this Earth isn’t to sit at computers or watch our TVs or scroll on our phones watching other people’s filtered lives, you know? And yes, the irony of me writing and you reading this newsletter on a phone or computer isn’t lost on me.

It made me think about a passage I read recently from Chris La Tray, a Métis storyteller who writes the fabulous newsletter

An Irritable Métis

on Substack:

So many people, adults and children alike, can identify corporate logos and know the schedules of Black Friday sales and can argue trivial bullshit with authority but couldn’t say when to expect the ospreys back or even identify one by sight or sound if they noticed their return in the first place. And yes, I recognize that the circumstances of so many people’s lives make it impossible to notice such things because the daily scramble just to live is overwhelming, but whose fault is that? All of ours. They are all symptoms of the same problem.

*shakes fist at sky*

Our disconnection from the outdoors is a bummer for lots of reasons, but the one that makes me saddest is the one Chris touches on: so many people just don’t have a choice. The inequitable conditions of our society means that millions of people aren’t able to partake in true leisure and unproductive outdoor contemplation because of the constant, frantic necessity to feed your family, pay rent, and participate in the exploitative hamster wheel that makes money available for those things. I get that listening to the birds or watching the waves hit the shore or stepping outside when you’ve got a million things to do doesn’t feel especially compelling, let alone possible, when you’re trying to keep it together in a world that demands everything of you all the time. Shakes fist, indeed.

But for those who do have time to step outside and don’t, what could reconnecting to nature look like for you? This is the question I’m thinking about this week, and I’m curious if you think about this, too. Have you been successful in carving out dedicated outdoor time for yourself? What does that look in your life, and has it looked different depending on where you live or what stage of life you’re in? If you haven’t been able to do this as much as you want—don’t be hard on yourself—but also, what do you want to change? I’d love to know.

This week, I’m going to try really hard to pull my eyeballs away from my screens and point them towards the sky instead. The world is going on around me, and I don’t want to miss it.

Thanks so much for being here, you guys.

Until next time,

Elizabeth