I had warned my Camino love (and husband) that the Sacramento Valley was an uncomfortable place to live in the summer. Memories flashed by of my friend and I volunteering for a homeless shelter in her non air conditioned car just sweating all over ourselves, trying to pretend that the hot air blowing in from the windows was refreshing. "Don't worry," I tell him, "as long as you stay indoors where it's cool you'll be fine." Little did I know he'd eventually get two jobs that required him to work outdoors and that temperatures would reach 115 degrees as early as late June. "I feel like roasted chicken" he told me in a text from work, to which I assumed meant he wanted me to pick up a rotisserie at Safeway. Of course, he meant he was the roasted chicken. A roasted Belgian chicken.
This all reminds me of a time on the Camino where a heat wave swept through Spain, somehow annihilating all traces of shade in its wake. One of these days we were trudging to Portomarin - a city quite cruelly placed atop a hill. I remember thinking to myself as I drug my feet up the billionth step to get to the top that never in my life had I sweat so much in a day. 'Moisture Wicking' my ass. I was drenched. The hottest day I'd lived through other than the time my mother and I spent a night in a Death Valley hotel who's AC had broken, thanking god every time the ceiling fan made a rotation and evaporated one of the collective beads of sweat of my forehead. Yes, those are my hottest memories. THEN I walked outside this morning.
With the luxury of working indoors and in the safety and security of temperature controlled home, you tend to forget the scorched earth laying in wait beyond the front door. As I looked at the wilting gardenia bush in the front yard, I thought of my poor pilgrim husband schlepping to work like a slumped over, melting Dali clock, and my heart sunk. So what do the Sacramento Valley people do to escape the heat? They go to Tahoe. We were just there with the family, in fact... and what did I do? I avoided going into the lake because it was too cold. Too cold! If I could take it all back I would sit in that lake like a Coke in an ice box. Just snuggle right on into the sand and chill. Until we can go back, I guess I'll just greet my roasted chicken husband at the door with a cool drink and a look that says, "Don't worry. As long as you never go back outside the house until fall, you'll be fine."
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Some pictures from our Tahoe excursion:
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