Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
As long as I can remember, my mom had a book titled “Indian Summer” on our bookcase. It was next to the 20-volume set of the American Peoples Encyclopedia, which I read cover to cover from third through eighth grade. (Yes, I did get out once in a while, but obviously not that much.)
That title, “Indian Summer,” had a beguiling image of a rural farm setting somewhere with oak and maple trees, and corn fields. I never read it, just checked out the cover once in a while.
We consider the idea of “Indian Summer,” those few too many weeks after the first frost when the weather remains warm despite the advance of October, November, and even December, to be something unique to our section of the world. It’s not.
It is a term used by the indigenous people of North America that was given to early European immigrants to describe the tantalizing exemption from the harsh advance of winter. Not just the Native Americans who call the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains home, but the people of New England and the Great Lakes as well.
Southern tribes and those living on the West Coast and in the Southwest didn’t have a term for it, they didn’t experience much in the way of winter either.
The original people of Pennsylvania, New York, and New England knew it all too well. So did the tribes of the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi.
It coincided with the harvest of the “Three Sisters” (corn, squash, and beans) that the original Americans living east of the Mississippi depended on to get them through the long winters. Add fish, deer, elk, moose, pronghorn, Big Horn Sheep, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, squirrel, and the grocery store on four legs, the American bison, and you have a menu fit for a king, or at least for people who know how to live off the land without destroying it.
Americans use the term “Indian Summer” as a description of a season. It’s a tribute to the ingenuity and adaptability of the Native people. Anyone who can not only survive but thrive in the frigid upper regions of North America deserves the utmost respect.
You won’t find Germans, the French, Serbians, or Turks calling this phenomenon “Indian Summer,” but each of these groups has a name for the season.
In Germany, it’s “altweibersommer” (yes, I had to look that up), but I’d heard it called “Old Woman’s Summer” by a few of my grandparents’ German friends as a kid. In Czech it’s “babí léto,” and in France they call it “St. Martin’s Summer.” Why it’s called that is a mystery to me since St. Martin is the patron saint of the soldier.
In Spain, where the actual summer can continue into January, it’s ”Quince Summer,” which coincides with the quince harvest. Like the American persimmon, the quince is inedible until it’s cooked or after a hard frost. They’re both astringent on the tree, but after a frost, well, there was a reason one of my dad’s favorite sayings was, “You’re grinning like a opossum eating a persimmon.” They have a unique flavor once a cold snap turns them.
We don’t think of Turkey as a cold place, but the northern stretches of the Anatolian Plain can be brutal with storms blowing south from Russia. The Turks call their warm autumn season
“Pastirma Summer.”
It sounds a bit like pastrami, because it’s nearly identical to it, and you guessed it, traditionally the Turks cured pastirma in late autumn, just before winter hit.
You can find the people of the Balkans, the Serbs, Croats, and Bulgarians referring to the season as “Gypsy Summer” or more often, “Poor Man’s Summer.”
You don’t hear about Indian Summer in Africa, or southern Asia, but the Chinese experience winter as often as we do and have a couple of names for Indian Summer, the most prominent is the “Autumn Tiger.” An image of a big cat fighting off the forces of nature rolling in on cold fronts from Siberia. Ever the optimists, the Chinese also call it “Little Spring” and raise fast-growing vegetables in this brief repast before winter. They extend cabbage and ground crops well into December if the “Autum Tiger” is in a fighting spirit.
The earliest written reference to “Indian Summer” came in 1778 in a short story written by Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur. He wrote about a short period after the first frost officially ended summer as a time of smoke and mildness.
I don’t know about the smoke, but the mildness of this autumn has been much appreciated. There were times when I played football in below-zero weather in October, and many Halloweens were spent with the kids bundled up like the Pillsbury Dough Boy just to hit a few houses trick or treating before retreating to the warmth of our van.
Predictions for the upcoming week vary, with mild temperatures continuing until next Sunday, when a cold front arrives.
That’s a bonus for livestock, wildlife, delivery drivers, rig workers, ranchers, and anyone else who has to work outside through the winter.
“Living on borrowed time,” comes to mind with this extended Indian Summer.
Just a caveat to the temperate weather we’ve enjoyed in October and November.
In 1948, the weather in these two months was even warmer. Temperatures soared to 60 and 70 degrees through the first couple of weeks of November. An early blizzard arrived on November 18.
On November 15, the high temperature in Wyoming was recorded at 71 degrees; three days later, it was below zero, 12 to 24 inches of snow fell, and winds hit 70 miles per hour in certain locations.
There was no break until April.
In January, the “Big One” hit, the worst winter storm on record, heralding the legend of the “Winter of ’49.” Books and documentaries have been written/filmed about that winter.
It is an omen of what might be.
Omen or not, I’ve sure enjoyed the mild early morning temperatures, the late afternoon heat, and the joy of running the heater on a morning drive but coming home with the windows open.
It’s autumn in Wyoming. If you have it figured out. Please let us know.