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Cog’s Weekly Newsletter
In August, we float
Editor's Note: This essay appeared in Cognoscenti's newsletter of ideas and opinions, delivered weekly on Sundays. To become a subscriber, sign up here.
Summer in New England has a frantic quality to it. We of the land where it is too often miserably gray and cold for seven months of the year feel pressure to take advantage of the sun and heat while we can. And, if you’re a parent, you know there are approximately 77 days between the last day of school and the first day of the new school year. That means we have roughly 11 weeks to eat ice cream, sell lemonade, roast marshmallows, go on vacation, catch a baseball game, attend an outdoor concert, collect seashells, see the grandparents.
Doing all the things and making all the memories are well-intentioned impulses; they also can be kind of a lot. By mid-August, as the school year looms, there is suddenly something appealing about not having to slather kids in sunscreen and sort camp pickups. And this mere whiff of relief, with its promise of a return to normal schedules and more appropriate bedtimes, carries with it some remorse of not wanting to wish a moment of this warmest season away, no matter how frantic. August, apparently, contains multitudes.
Enter into the equation Cog’s informal mid-August mini-retreat. This is only the second year we’ve “retreated” in August, but it’s become something we look forward to. It’s a few hours for us to reconnect, talk about work and life, and dream about the year ahead, with the enthusiasm that comes from being between one season and the next. (The Cog team has a hybrid work schedule – we talk every day, but rarely have an opportunity to collaborate in person. As it happens, Cog editor Kate Neale Cooper is floating asynchronously this week, on vacation.)
This week we sat knee to knee on a sailboat, sandwiches on our laps, a bag of salt and vinegar chips between us, Pepperidge Farm cookies beckoning. Bluetooth speaker playing a slow mix; backpack cooler stuffed with cold cans of Diet Coke and fizzy rose.
On the agenda? Floating.
In this newfound tradition, we jump off the boat into Buzzards Bay, where the strength of the current seems to change by the minute. We buoy ourselves on a pool noodle or tread water, keeping our hearts and legs pumping as we avoid drifting too far from the boat. The water temperature at this time of year is cool but not cold, a perfect compliment to the mid-day sun. And it’s there, in the water, with no phones or news or kids to distract us, where we float. It’s where the ideas come, and where we set an intention for the year ahead.
In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
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It wouldn’t work to do this exercise in the middle of summer, when our minds are whirring with all the busyness of the season. Especially this summer. Between an election-altering debate in late June, an assassination attempt, President Biden’s decision to step aside (setting up a historic race for the White House), a joyous Olympics and devastating wars abroad, it’s been a challenge to keep pace.
But by mid-August, nature beckons us to slow down: the crickets’ chirps grow in intensity; the hydrangeas have lost their colors; the mornings are cool; the sun feels less sharp than it did even a few weeks ago. Fall is coming.
Katherine May’s book “Wintering,” is about the rhythm of living seasonally, and her latest, “Enchanted,” is about finding wonder in our everyday lives. “You have to keep pursuing it until you get that tingle that tells you that you’ve found something that’s magical to you,” May said in a New York Times interview.
Whether it’s Ferris Bueller, or Katherine May, or just your Cog editors out for a float, here’s to what we find when we make space to slow down, even just for a day. To help you savor summer’s last gasps, we made a playlist of some of the songs we listened to on the water – songs that are getting us through. We hope you enjoy it.
