My word, the weather has been glorious in my neck of the woods, the days clear and still with enough heat to make Pluto lazy and encourage us to take it easy and really live those hazy, lazy days of summer, but not so hot as to make life a dripping misery. And the sea, oh the sea! We live walking distance to the beach and every day it’s been picture-perfect—calm, with even waves just strong enough for boogie-boarding, and warm, so warm, I’ve-never-felt-it-so-warm warm!  

Yes, around these parts it’s been summer-postcard perfect, right in the sweet-spot, a true reflection of the image we dream up of the idyllic summer. Today, as I sit writing this, it’s the same as it’s been for days on end—I’m looking out the window at clear blue skies, still trees, pink flowers of the fuchsia bright against the brown grass. Perhaps this is what our parents mean when they talk of what summers used to be like?

Ahhh, memories.

How wonderful for the kids to have a big stretch of proper summer holiday weather before school goes back.

Dreams of a perfect season for schools are upon us here in New Zealand, with the new government promising a return to the glory days of yore, when kids learned proper things at the proper time in the proper timeframe; when everything was in order and the results were great. What a picture! Can you see it too? Back to that sweet-spot, doing school how it’s supposed to be done (how it used to be done).

Ahhh, memories.

Close your eyes and imagine … those orderly classrooms full of attentive children, focused solely on the teacher and the work they’ve been given to do, not a distraction in sight, listening, practicing, listening, practicing, listening, practicing, consistently getting better at the basics, at the right pace, each and every year. Oh, the outcomes!

Ahhh, picture perfect!

A couple of days ago I was out past where the waves were breaking, floating on my back. It was early evening, the sun skimming off the smooth sea, and as I was soaking in all the gloriousness, a thought … The sea shouldn’t be this warm. Even though it’s perfect for me, the sea shouldn’t be this warm.

Then, the articles I’d read about what happened to Florida’s coral reefs this last northern hemisphere summer came to mind; the horrific details of mass bleaching and death that came with seas as warm as bathwater. 

I thought of the dead juvenile whale that washed up on our beach in mid-December and the chat I’d had with the Department of Conservation’s whale expert, who was unsure why it was so underweight but thinking it could be one of three things: not being weaned and losing it’s mother, getting its intestinal tract blocked with detritus, or a virus; and that last one reminded me of the research I’d read about how warming oceans are making it easier for marine diseases to spread.

Discomforting intrusions suggesting not all is well beneath the surface.

…

I looked out to sea. Kāpiti Island shimmered in the distance.

I thought … man, this is so nice … and about how I’d get out soon and how refreshed I’d feel, and how we’d walk home and I’d have a beer on the deck.

A perfect end to a perfect summers day.

Ahhh …

…

But then I thought about the disconnect between the perfection of these ocean conditions for me, a visiting spectator, and how these same conditions are increasingly inhospitable for those who inhabit this environment.

I thought of how much we’re unable (unwilling?) to see when we luxuriate in the picture that so closely mirrors our image of perfection.

I thought about how we’re the architects of this new climate reality, and how the values that have shaped it are anchored in a particular view of what the rest of the world is for.

Perhaps, as this dream of a perfect season starts in our schools, that’s something worth thinking about.

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Thanks for your attention 🙂