In honor of the northeast heatwave, I’m pulling out a favorite college essay from my days in Central Florida.
Feb. 1, 2023
I’m amazed how seasonal depression strikes me, even in Florida’s armpit.
Florida’s armpit. That’s what the fellow at the conference called my new town of Lakeland, hedged in swamp and sprinkled with—you guessed it—lakes, which drench the sky with their vapor. He lives in Jacksonville now, where they apparently enjoy less humidity.
I step outside and the morning air assaults me. It occurs how I’ve missed the feeling. The southern temperatures are comfortable, yes. But it isn’t until today, feeling smothered as by a blanket, that something in me releases. The driest winter days are behind. I pull a deep breath.
Humidity determines the life supported in a space. While primary textbooks teach the formation of civilizations along rivers, streams, and bodies of water, this is a limited view. The water we don’t see plays a greater role. The plant and animal kingdoms—entire ecosystems—arrange under humidity’s order. Even temperature is outranked. In the desert, fiery temps plunge to ice overnight, parching life that sprouted in the day. Meanwhile, the lush forest retains its heat and houses its species in kindness. Why the difference? The humid moisture of forest skies holds the heat tight. So the very globe and its inhabitants organize by tiny vapor molecules, the invisible soul of the sky.
“We’re looking at places in Sarasota,” my friend Sam announces on the phone. “People up here say we’re crazy. They say we’ll get tired of the heat. But I just don’t think so.”
“Haven’t gotten tired of it yet,” I reply. “Some people aren’t cut out for it.” I start my car, baking in the sunny driveway, and enter a battle unwittingly. My body wrestles the air to accept excess heat from its systems. Sweat has nowhere to evaporate. The cabin is filled to occupancy. This is our struggle with humidity: there’s competition in this space so full of life.
There’s chaos in the air. I didn’t feel it in the Texas plains or the Arizona desert, where scorching temperatures had a silence about them. Here, miniature lizards dart about, anxiously bobbing their torsos in shows of dominance. They’re harmless, except the harm forever imprinted from meeting one in my shoe. I had just moved south from Canton, and the creature took up a new place of his own. That was near the time I looked up at a frightening noise in the night to see an owl perched above, calmly disassembling a snake and discarding the crumbs at my feet. So generous are the neighbors. I only wish that owl could muster its appetite for the shy monster in the shed. I saw it but once, caught bathing in the sun, though it leaves its skin as assurance of its invisible presence.
Alligators are another looming threat. The gargantuan gator at the park on my street, caught on camera, became an internet celebrity. My eyes peer about as I move to the trail, hoping not to become her catch.
These beasts are my neighbors. My home is theirs, adorned in subtropical appurtenances. We find our life here, our bond traced back to moisture levels in the air.
We humans condition air and control climate and manipulate our spaces for comfort. Machines slurp the water from our spaces, and a range of irritations occur: scratching throats, cracking skin, itching eyes. Viruses penetrate our drying defenses as we seek to escape the discomfort of humidity—the discomfort of life. We want tropical views without bearing the weight of the soul.
Nature sends a more honest message: life doesn’t flourish in comfort.
Humidity is honest. There’s no pretense about it. There are only so many fans; so much shade; so many ice cubes; so many dips in the pool; so many sunglasses; so many outfits that breathe; so many hair products and so much deodorant. Facades will be pierced. Masks will be let down. Today, we’re all sweating it out.
I arrive at the lake, and it’s not manmade. The palms have not been planted, and the grass is not plastic. Green life expands in every direction. So humid of a place has its chaos, but evil is not inherent in chaos. That’s what Sam and I intuit. Surface comfort—that is, on the surface of our skin—is not entirely admirable. Humidity is the cost of living in a place where life thrives.
Some runners race out early to “beat the heat.” It’s not a race you’ll win. I don’t run to stay cool; I run to tap into the chaos, jutting side to side so as not to crush the lizards. The heavy air is not an attack, but an embrace.
Those others run to flee what life runs to feel. Humidity, life’s invisible soul.
Beautiful words and thoughts as always man