A Heatwave, a Forest Walk, and Slow Living — a writer’s diary entry, 7th of July

Thirty-eight degrees by midday, they’re saying, maybe more by the weekend. I closed every shutter on the south side before nine. I’ve learned that much at least, living somewhere this old. The downstairs stays properly cool if you shut it up in time, stone walls doing what stone walls have always done, holding onto the night’s cold air like a secret. Upstairs gives up by noon. Downstairs holds until four, sometimes later, if I’m disciplined about the doors too. I sat at the kitchen table for an hour just to feel it.

I walked into the forest instead of writing. I told myself it was research. It wasn’t. I just wanted the particular dark green cool of it, the way the air changes the second you’re properly under the trees, a different climate entirely, ten degrees kinder at least, maybe more. I’ve read people call it forest bathing, which always sounds too neat for what it actually is. It isn’t bathing. It’s just what a body does when it’s finally allowed to stop bracing against the heat.

I found a fallen branch shaped a bit like a torn stitch and I picked it up without really deciding to, the way you do with things in a forest, some old instinct that says take this, you might need it, even though I have no earthly idea what for. It’s on the windowsill now next to the salt and the bowl of pinecones nobody remembers collecting. I keep meaning to throw all of it out eventually. I never do.

I think heat like this makes me superstitious. I wouldn’t defend it if pressed. It’s just a low hum of a feeling, the sense that a day this fierce wants some acknowledgement from you, some small ritual that says I noticed, I’m not taking this for granted. I made mint tea and let it go cold on purpose. I left the window open a crack even though nothing was coming in but hot air, because it felt rude somehow not to.

I barely thought about the manuscript at all today, which is its own kind of relief. Some days the best thing you can do for the work is refuse it entirely and go stand under a tree instead. I used to feel guilty about days like that. I don’t any more, or I’m at least getting better at not performing the guilt even when I feel it.

I should eat something. Still too hot to want to.