The Heat is On

The heat is here. It arrived a few days ago and is likely to park itself here for the next five or six months. Living in Savannah has taught me to change the way I think about warm weather. The heat feels different above the Mason Dixon Line. It feels different from the American Southwest. I supposed that’s due to the humidity. Those other places get hot but they don’t have the same, wicked combination of high heat and high humidity. You can feel the air here, a soft fug, like somebody slapped you with a shag carpet.

That first summer we arrived three years ago, I thought I might just up and die. It wasn’t just the heat, but the heat’s relentlessness. It hung there, day after day, week after week, into mid-October. I felt duped. I mean, yeah I knew the South got hot, but I didn’t realize it would get hot for me; some part of me must have thought I was exempt.

Nor did it help that I moved to Savannah owning exactly zero pairs of shorts. I am not a shorts-wearer by nature. Shorts imply a certain insouciance that I do not feel, a devil-may-care je ne sais quoi that is entirely antithetical to my brand. For the several months, and despite Martha’s insistence that I get some shorts, I refused to succumb, reasoning that my body “just needed to adjust.”

It did not need to adjust. It needed not to die.

Finally, I drove to Target and picked out a few pairs of short pants. Game changer. The difference between wearing shorts and jeans in a Savannah summer is the difference between getting punched in the face by Will Smith or getting punched in the face by Mike Tyson. Neither is pleasant but only one will kill you.

I now own many pairs of shorts in various weaves and fabrics. The shorts have cooled me off considerably but have done little to nothing to ameliorate my personality.

Pictured: the author in Savannah

Next, I learned the value of shade. I thought I knew all about shade; turns out I didn’t know shit. If you’ve ever seen photos of Savannah, you know the city is draped with live oaks. Practically suffused with them. I don’t know what make these oaks any more “live,” than other oaks, but that’s what they call them. They’re large and lush, slow-growing trees that provide tremendous canopy cover to the poor creatures (people) living below.

One travels through Savannah in pools of shadow. You find a little dapple here,  hopscotch to a little dapple there, and the next thing you know, you’ve arrived at your destination having hardly brushed the sun.

The city protects the trees, the trees protect the city. It’s a lovely little symbiotic relationship we’ve got going here. Walk through the Historic District and you’ll see a city in love with greenery. The squares and sidewalks are planted with azaleas and honeysuckle and lots of shrubby little things that probably have their own names, but which I am not going to bother to learn.

I’ve also learned to adjust my pace. They call it “Slowvannah” for a reason. Nothing gets done fast. At first I thought it was because people didn’t have the same gumption as us Yankees but I soon realized that the reason people take their time here is because, for half of the year, to do anything else is to invite heatstroke. The other half of the year, they just don’t see the need for speed. “If slow worked half the year, it’ll surely work the other half,” seems to be the rationale, and it’s hard to find fault with the logic.

The heat finally broke for good as we headed up on Halloween. Bliss. I found myself loving the cool weather, but already worrying over the heat’s return. Every degree drop felt like a tease because I knew it would rise again. The rest of the fall was lovely, winter divine. Spring a goddamned dream.

Then the heat showed up on schedule like a crummy aunt being shuffled from family home to family home. Those first few days flooded my endocrine system with dread. My delicate constitution was not meant for such heat, I thought. Surely I will expire in a puddle of my own juices.

I fanned myself and waited for the end.

Over the next few days and weeks, though, something unexpected happened. I found I kind of liked it.

What the hell was this?

There’s that scene at the beginning of Sexy Beast when Ray Winstone lowers himself onto a poolside lounge in the Spanish countryside. It looks hot. It looks crazy hot. But when he gets himself settled, he emits a self-satisfied grunt of pure pleasure. That’s kind of how I felt.

Which brings me to the final, most important lesson for surviving Southern heat. You can’t fight it. You have to submerge yourself in it. You have to bathe in it and let it fill every pore until you are one with it. You will sweat and you will thirst. You will complain. You’ll slow down. You’ll overapply sunscreen. But you will also love the thickness of it. The way it presses up against you like a big cat. You’ll give yourself over to it because there’s nothing else to be done. And when it finally goes, you’ll pull out a pair of blue jeans and a light sweater with something like amazement.