What summer? --- Day 13/281

Walk: Hood, natch

Distance: 4 miles

Mount Norwottuck on an Indian summer day in western Massachusetts, October 2008   
@Andy Anderson

So, yesterday Ciwt described the current San Francisco weather as 'Indian summer.' Over the years she has done the same countless times about the weather in the Midwest, the East Coast, certain parts of the West.  It is a descriptive phrase she picked up sometime in her youth for balmy, summer-like weather that occurs later in the cold, frosty Fall.  But, until today, she never wondered 'why the term?,' 'where did it come from?,' things like that.

On researching, it looks like most people have the same understanding of the term, but no one is exactly sure of its origins.  

The earliest known reference to Indian summer is in an 1778 essay by the Frenchman, J. Hector St. John de Crevecouer.  It reads in part and in French: Great rains at last replenish the springs, the brooks, the swamp and impregnate the earth. Then a severe frost succeeds which prepares it to receive the voluminous coat of snow which is soon to follow; though it is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian Summer.  Apparently that essay didn't reach the States until 1920.  Make of that what you will; to Ciwt it means it couldn't have had much influence on our use of the term here.

Whether the 'Indians' referred to are Native American (probably) or from India (maybe) is also up for grabs.  What isn't though is the universality of the phenomenon.  In Western and Middle Europe a warm period in autumn is called - get ready - 'old woman's summer.'  Likewise in Slavic-language countries.  In Bulgaria it is called 'gypsy summer, or 'poor man's summer.' The Irish refer to it as 'little autumn of the geese' while those in Spain enjoy 'little autumn of the quince tree.'  

In Turkey they call it  pastirma yazi, meaning 'pastrami summer' since the month of November at some point was considered the best time to make pastirma, or modern day pastrami.  Like that meat, the names and countries are a big mix from Saints names to Greek mythology.

Wherever it is and whatever it is called, Ciwt bets that, like her, most people consider these days the most gorgeous of the entire year.  Especially in New England, which she misses deeply during 'Indian summer.'