What Is Summer For?

A Gentle Meditation on Relaxation, Nature, and the Season

Relaxation: the state of being free from tension and anxiety.

Not an easy state to reach in our modern lives. Responsibilities pile high—work, caregiving, commitments, screen time—and the pace often feels unrelenting. Even in summer, a season we associate with ease and warmth, the stress doesn’t always let up.

What is summer, really?

Certainly, it’s the warmest season of the year, and for many, the most longed-for. We even chase it—traveling south in the winter just to find a little summer warmth when our own landscape is frozen over. But is summer more than just a temperature? Could it offer us something we deeply need?

Richard Louv writes, “Unlike technology, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing.”

Summer invites us into nature more fully—into the garden, the water, the trails, the long evenings, and bright mornings. It draws us outside in a way no other season quite can. The growth forces are abundant, and so is the invitation to slow down and notice.

Slowing down might be the key. Could we let go of rushing and become more present? Could we remember to savour good meals, barefoot walks, laughter with friends, the quiet of early mornings, the songs of birds, and the hum of insects?

Louv reminds us: “This principle holds that a reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.”

And yet, even in the presence of all this beauty, we can forget. Surrounded by a tech-informed world, we often overlook the very place we’re in. Whether we’ve lived in the same spot all our lives or traveled far to get here, do we love the land we’re in?

“If you can't live in the land you love, love the land you're in,” Louv encourages.

I’m doing my best to lean into summer this year. I garden—though many of the plants weren’t ones I planted. I walk the beach. I spend time with family and friends. I swim, paint, and shine light on neglected corners of my home. I harvest food from the garden—raspberries, garlic, potatoes, lettuce—and dry herbs for winter. I place fresh-cut flowers on the table and watch them slowly fade. I read one of those books from the pile of “I’m going to read it”—on the porch or in the hammock.

These little acts, this presence, help remind me to ask: Am I doing what I need to do this summer to carry my body all the way to next summer?

Because if we listen, summer teaches us. It shows us how to be in rhythm with life.

And it reminds us of the value of imagination. “Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination,” Louv writes—but so too does sitting under a tree, watching clouds shift, or seeing a child play in a tide pool. “In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.”

We need that separate peace, too.

So maybe summer isn’t just a time of year—it’s a way of being. A chance to be free from tension and anxiety. A time to listen, slow down, and reconnect.

Writing this is helping me remember that.
Maybe reading it will help you do the same.

Warmly, Heather. (all photos Heather Church)