We are in the throes of Indian Summer.

It’s always so nice when it happens around here.

Usually, as August stretches to it’s full length, the summer feels like it will burn itself out with it’s own heat and then BAM! we get a cold snap that makes us regret bad mouthing the sun.  At least that’s how it is for me. . .

But then we know mercy when we can welcome back a handful of warm days.  The kind of days that make you feel happy to be alive so you go out and soak up as much vitamin d as you can before winter creeps in.  The sun feels good and there is a different slant to it.  We can feel the earth tipping as we head further from our closest star and towards the dark.  The wind is crisp and the mornings cool.  The speed of summer (really, who ever truly has “lazy” days in the summer?  Anyone?  Anyone?) is whinding down as we apply the brakes into winter.  If you have lived here you know that winter feels as if time has stopped.

Thankfully, we aren’t there yet.

Back to Indian Summer.

What I want to know is if it is still an acceptable term to use.  I’m not necessarily a Politically Correct kind of gal – call it as I see it, remember? – but I would like to know if Indian Summer is as passe and outmoded as the ‘Red Man’ song from Peter Pan circa 1953.

“Squaw no dance. Squaw gettum fire wood!”

Ah, yes.  The story of my life. . .

And while we’re having this discussion, how did it come to be called Indian Summer anyway?

I looked it up and, like most things, it’s beginning is uncertain.  Perhaps it was because in this time of leaves having changed, warm temps and before the frost, the Indians in New England stopped making raids on the Colonists. Or perhaps, like Indian Giver, it stands for false summer, something that will not last.

No matter.  I will, in this time between  times, use the term Indian Summer and try to take it in as much as I can.

It may not last long.