It’s Hot Weather, But Not Man-Made

When I was a kid—which, terrifyingly, is now about half a century ago—we lived outside like feral little sun-worshippers, barefoot and oblivious. On scorching summer days, the tar on the road would melt into black syrup, and our feet would come home stained like chimney sweeps—not from dirt, but from gooey asphalt we smeared around with our toes like war paint. The roads got so hot we had to sprint across them, playing a game of “don’t burn your soles” without realizing it was our first lesson in thermodynamics. Back then, we knew something that seems to have slipped modern minds entirely: summers are hot, winters are cold, and sometimes they’re not. Some years we prayed for snow and got mud instead. Sometimes we had freakishly warm Christmases and shrugged. None of us thought humans had summoned it with their campfires and cranky engines. We just knew weather was moody, erratic, and gloriously beyond our control. 

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