Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

July Fourth has come and gone for another year. This year it was great. Traffic was moving once again across the Broad Street Bridge, and there was a big crowd of people out at the Covered Bridge Park and downtown to celebrate the holiday events at the Covered Bridge Park and the fireworks finale.

Summer is the season that reminds us to come alive. It’s about being outside, whether on a street downtown or on a walk in the woods.

Sitting on my porch one night this past week, my mind raced back to when I was a child growing up on a hill in the Beck Mountain community and sitting on a porch after supper. My sisters and I often waited and watched for sunset, when the fireflies’ dance would start in earnest. Asking my mom for some jars with holes poked in the lids, my sisters and often some neighbor friends would run around the yard in front of our house chasing the fireflies and hoping to catch some magic. We liked the fireflies that danced around our front and back yards and porch because they never stung us. Nor did they bite us. Those were good things. And our parents liked the fact that they didn’t eat any of the plants or vegetables they had in their garden. They weren’t pesky pests. Technically, fireflies are not flies – they are actually beetles. They use bioluminescent light to communicate with each other, primarily to attract mates but sometimes to signal alarm or send a warning or even to attract food.

Luck often struck, and we’d get a bunch in each jar and take them back to our chairs to sit on the porch and admire them. We’d proudly show them off to our parents, and they would smile at us and each other, knowing that having kids running around chasing fireflies is definitely a rite of childhood. The fireflies would flash their lights, and in the darkness it always seemed magical – it always looked as if we had our very own light show. Later that night, we’d fall asleep contently, dreaming about whatever adventures might unfold the next day.

Each July I’m reminded that the leisurely summer months are here, and kids don’t have to think about the first day of school for a while. Many a summer day, my sisters and I would make play houses in the wooded area beside our house. We’d rake the pine needles in the outline of rooms and carry small blankets and quilts and spread them on the ground, pretending they were chairs or beds. We’d make mudcakes and set them out in the sun to dry and harden.

In the evening, neighborhood kids would often visit and we’d play an impromptu game of ball at the back of our house or in the woods beside the house.

Other times we’d play board games or a game of Old Maid. One game would lead into the next, and it was a fun way to pass the time. When we grew tired, we’d pick up a book to read – one that we already had read not once, but many times. Old softballs and old books to this day evoke certain memories, always of summer days spent hanging around the house as a kid looking for something to do. We were kids, after all, with all the time in the world on lazy summer days.

As we grew older, we often helped our mother in the garden picking beans and breaking them in preparation for canning outside over an open fire. Often we pulled and shucked corn, as my mom froze it for winter meals. My mom made pickles, canned tomatoes, apples and other things she and my dad raised.

When carnival season arrived, sometimes on the weekend we would go to the carnival and do a few rides. We always took weekend rides to Watauga Lake, and once or twice a year we would take a day trip to Roan Mountain to the Rhododendron Gardens for a picnic.

To kids now, our summer might seem boring and nonexciting, but I relish those memories, when my brothers and sisters and I were once kids with few worries in the world.

Age has a way of changing things.

The things that make summer special are both the memories that we create and the small things that we can only do in those few months.

Summer is a season like no other. For kids, it’s time off from school, the opportunity to enjoy long days without thought of homework and the chance to sleep in.

Summer is special because we make it special; we make it fun, memorable, enjoyable and exciting. Now that I’m in my young senior years of life, I enjoy porch sitting, watching the butterflies flit from flower to flower, visits from family and friends, and yes, neighbors. And I’m blessed to be able to still work some.

It’s only July. There’s still plenty of summer left – make each day count and enjoy. Soon, it will be winter again, and we will have to stay inside and younger ones will return to school.