These are the days

These are the days I live for and love so--those days when the night temperature in 25 degrees cooler than the high in the day. 50 F tonight and 75 F tomorrow. What I love is to wear a sweater and shorts in the same 24 hours.

Sleep is easy, profound and full of wondrous dreams when the temperature falls to 50 after being in the high 70's that day. Windows are always open. Air conditioners are mute and needless. The night temperature keeps the house cool even in the 70's in the next afternoon.

I have this memory about growing up in the mountains of southern West Virginia. We were almost as far south as Richmond, Virginia, but we were much higher up. My memory is that, because of the altitude and the mountains, Spring and Autumn were 4 months each and Summer and Winter were two months each.

Spring an Autumn have those 25 degree swings. Summer and Winter don't. It just seems to me that in the mountains Spring and Autumn hung on and on, reluctant to let go to what came next.

Oh, it was hot there--HOT--and no one had air-conditioning. And it was cold there--oh, so COLD--and snow out the gazoo. But neither lasted long enough to have you begin to pine for something else. By the time you got tired of Winter's cold and snow, Spring had snuck in a month sooner than expected and 65 in the day and 45 in the night became the norm. And when Summer had begun to wilt you, Autumn made itself known and it was a 72/50 mix of day and night.

I'd never live in southern West Virginia again. It would be too depressing. The county I grew up in had 70,000 inhabitants in 1950. Today, it has 27,000. It is a 'ghost county' the size of Rhode Island. Plus, Right Wing crazies have taken over the state. In the Democratic Primary in 2012, a inmate of an Oklahoma prison got over 25% of the vote against President Obama. I kid you not, look it up.

But though I'd never live there, I remember this. That was the perfect climate. All four seasons but the two bad ones shortened and the two loved ones lengthened.

That's what I remember.

These nights like tonight would go on for four months back in McDowell County....