8 Aug
32 “Slow Living” Inspired Ways to Savor Summer
As we round out the last few weeks of summer, I’ve been thinking about all the potential left in the season. Although there’s admittedly less pressure to grab hold of every last warm day in my current locale, I remember savoring those final weeks of summer in Northern New England. Time was truly of the essence, and we didn’t waste a day with both fall and school on the horizon again. No matter where we live, I think summer inspires a leisure we more readily forgo in other months when routine often has greater hold of our days. In the spirit of Primal play – and last week’s Slow Living post – here are a few (dozen) ideas for savoring the upcoming weeks. Enjoy, everyone!
- Have a Primal picnic. Surprise someone you love, or gather a rowdy group for a Primal inspired picnic. Throw in some Ultimate or beach volleyball, and you’ve got a party.
- Go for a walk in the summer rain. Grab you wellies or – even better – go barefoot. Taste the rain. Puddle stomp. Let your mind daydream in the upside reflections of the sky.
- Listen to the nighttime wildlife (e.g. the cicada, frogs, crickets, coyotes, etc.)
- For the remaining weeks of summer and early fall, pick 1-2 veggies a week that are at the peak of their harvest and go to town experimenting with recipes. Bonus: buy a slew of them at the farmer’s market while they’re cheap, and freeze or can them for later in the year.
- Camp.
- Sit around the fire at night – fire pit, campfire, bonfire, whatever you have.
- Host an impromptu dinner party or summer cocktail hour (al fresco of course). Gather some flowers from your garden for the table. Grill some shrimp in the shell and make a salad. String up some lights, set out some tiki torches, and let the party go well into the night.
- Use it as an excuse to whip up your favorite Primal-friendly/-adapted summer drinks like sangria, bloody Mary, gin and tonic, vodka lemonade, or kicked up old fashioned sun tea.
- Nap in a hammock.
- Attend an outdoor concert or play.
- Sleep as close to nature as you can. Even if you can’t camp on a given weekend, pitch a tent in the backyard, or sleep on the porch for a night.
- Have some slow style “quality time” with your partner – whenever and wherever the mood strikes (don’t get caught!).
- Create a piece of art – whatever you feel like doing in the moment. Don’t stifle the experience with imposed standards. Just see where your mind goes and follow it.
- Visit a new park in your area every weekend. Hit all the stops from wilderness areas to botanical gardens, nature centers to arboretums.
- Build toad or fairy houses with the kids.
- Mud fight!
- Spend a whole day (or at least an afternoon) on the water. Go surfing, rafting, water skiing, river tubing, boating, canoeing, kayaking, or any combination of the above.
- Have a late summer vacation? Take a day (if not the whole time) without any agenda whatsoever. Wander, poke around, park yourself somewhere and see what happens around you. Get as far away from the tourist hustle and bustle as possible and see where the locals go. Seek out the seemingly mundane, nondescript corners of the place. You might just find yourself swept up in something that will become the best memory of the whole trip.
- Take a vineyard tour.
- Have an outdoor family movie night – with old family videos. (Public libraries or other facilities sometimes rent out equipment.) Pass on some family history and personal memories. Share funny and meaningful stories late into the night.
- Plant something. Sure, it’s a leap of faith at this point in the season. Still, think bumper crop potential. Get in a row of lettuce, herbs, or some hearty root veggies.
- Meet the dawn one morning – with a hike, a yoga practice, or a early morning fishing expedition.
- Break out the water balloons.
- Sit on the beach (ocean or lake shore) with nothing but a cool drink and an indulgent novel.
- Spend the day among rocks. Skip stones, climb boulders, or go geode hunting.
- Fly a kite.
- Splurge on a few huge flower bouquets at the farmer’s market and decorate the house (and your office).
- Hang your laundry out to dry. Remember (or discover) what laundry used to smell like before dryers and dryer sheets.
- Build a fort (indoor or outdoor) with the kids – or for yourself.
- Reclaim the art of the backyard game. I’m talking the likes of croquet, frisbee golf, flag football, volleyball, horseshoes, Kubb (Viking chess), badminton, lawn darts, or outdoor bowling.
- Grill an entire four course meal, something totally new and challenging (pig roast, anyone?), or do a traditional New England clam bake.
- Spend an evening stargazing. On that note, don’t forget the upcoming Perseid meteor shower this weekend! If you’re a city dweller, get out of Dodge and see the sky the way Grok did.
Thanks for reading today, everybody. Enjoy your day – and your final weeks of summer. Be sure to leave your own ideas for making the most of the time.
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
Pick berries at a local PYO farm.
Pick blackberries in the wild for free, in the UK blackberry season has started a bit early (sooo much rain!) so am starting to fill the freezer now. Perfect excuse to go out for a walk each evening too.
Grew up in Georgis, USA. Summer got so hot we didn’t want to move much. We read books. Summer reading was a big deal. Still is for me. A real book not an e-book. reading in a hammock often brings on a nap. Reading on a quilt on the grass under a shade tree may do the same thing.
Often, my friends and I, would meet on the quilt with our sandwiches, drinks, and books. Eat, chat, read with friends. Summers were great.
Still are!
Please don’t play lawn darts if you are indulging in your accasional glass or two of red wine though, that would not make for a pleasant ER trip
Not many Coyotes in Brighton UK tho I did bump into a fox almost on my own doorstep yesterday. No crickets, frogs or cicadas either… perhaps I can get a recording
I love to stargaze. My boyfriend and I love to sit outside and stargaze and talk about whatever. This week will be difficult because the fires in N Utah are pretty severe. This morning driving to work, we could see the flames on the hills. I guess we could easily accomplish #6, sit around the fire.
I am hoping for a bike ride on the road by the Great Salt Lake this Saturday morning, as long as the weather holds. It is getting cool in the mornings and the days are getting shorter.
Beautiful. Reading this while I sit on the deck in the dark (save the light emitted from this contraption!), listening to a chorus of nearby and far-off cicadas, feeling the wind shift to the north for some much appreciated cool air. Life (outside) is good.
I learned many years ago that I required and preferred a slower pace of life than most. I’m sure many people view my life as boring but oh we’ll. I love a slow, relaxed pace with a LOT of down time. I hike, work, hang out, and the weekends are reserved for fun and relaxation. No yard or house work allowed!
I’ve set upon a community garden in this city. (gimme a break, can’t really afford to buy the stuff all the time). Tomatoes galore! The cherry tomatoes are so delicious I almost want to type this obnoxiously in CAPS.
Regarding sleeping close to nature:
Last night I camped by a lakeside, low-lying clouds covered the sky and lightning repeatedly illuminated them from within and above, with no thunder.
Was this one thought I just for me?
Build toad or fairy houses with the kids.
I feel a bit guilty now, but when I was younger I used to dig holes in sand and catch a bunch of frogs and/or toads, then imprison them in the holes, usually with my brother. Often I’d stick little twigs and broken sticks in the sides to look like spikes in a dungeon wall. It was lots of fun. I kept the frogs in buckets too, then let them go when I got bored.. or at the worst, stood on the end of the dock and threw them as far as I could out into the lake to watch the disturbance in the water of a big fish gobbling them up, like National Geographic videos in real life. Suppose I may have had some issues.
One time my brother and I caught a bunch of fish, filled a bucket with them so they could barely swim around. We forgot about them over lunch and when we went to check on them again there was a strong stench of dead fish as that’s what they then were.
Maybe that’s why I keep getting arrested.. old karmic backlashes.
Planting something would be great, but cropping is always an option.
Today I got a free big-ass salad: swiss chard, tomatoes, some baby beets and carrots, some sort of melon that was almost the size of my head, and eggplant, which I can’t remember having had before – I’ll try it out later. Library’s closing, I’m off to push my shopping cart of food a marathon distance under the night sky before I change my mind!
The wife & I got to do some slow living this last weekend. Our friends run a small-scale organic pig farm, and they asked us to ‘pig sit’ while they took a vacation. We were up with the sunrise, feeding and playing with the pigs (pigs are hilarious, by the way), taking long walks through the valley, watching deer from the back porch, practicing archery, leatherworking, making supper out of what we picked from the garden, and counting shooting stars at night as they streaked across the milky way – how often can a city dweller see the milky way? We even got some bi-phasic sleep. No internet, no phones (no cell phone service!), no tv, no news, no olympics, and no stressing out. It was hard to come back, but we both felt the difference it made in our normal lives – like a re-set button had been pushed, and emotional toxins had been drained from our systems. Half the fun is watching people’s faces when they ask “What did you guys do for your anniversary?”, and we say “We went to work on a pig farm!” (it just happened to fall on that weekend)
Sorry for the lengthy post, just wanted to brag about how lucky we are. Oh, everyone: read some Wendell Berry, if you haven’t yet.
Oh, yeah – there were coyotes, too!