Kill Me. I Dare You.

It’s not the humidity, it’s the heat. Each and every year I hear the exact opposite of that. Each and every Summer I hear from folk around here, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” I got some news for you people. It’s the heat. If the mercury had not homesteaded in a triple digit penthouse with a view for the last four weeks we wouldn’t be having this conversation about how damn hot it is, would we? 

Instead of eating during my lunch hour, I walk. I’ve walked every chance I’ve gotten in the last four weeks and I’ve dared the heat to kill me. Triple digit lizard killing heat and I’m out throwing down a four mile an hour pace. Kill me. Prove to me that I’m too old. Make me stop. Prove to me that I can’t take it anymore. Make me slow down, damn, it did do that, actually. Walking on the inside on an Easy Bake Oven with the Sun as the main element inside will do that to you.  State Route Ninety-four west out of Fargo leads nowhere.

It’s the Big Empty. You have to want to be out there to be out there. No one, ever, has ever gotten there accidently. If it were possible to count them, the number of people out there on foot would be a very small number. Those walking in triple digit heat? Smaller still.  I’ve been walking at lunch for a while now, and the first thing that someone said to me when it turned ungodly lizard killing hot was, “I bet you won’t be out there walking today!” I was. I walked that day it was one hundred two. The heat index was one fifteen. Kill me. I dare you.  Today was different. Today the temperature topped out around ninety and stalled. I could feel the heat trying to rise but a gentle breeze pushed it back again. Hot, yes, it was still hot, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. The long range forecast is that there will be no more triple digit heat this year. August is winding slowly down, and the heat that gripped this part of the world has lost its death grip.  I won, again.  There will come a day when the heat is too much, and I’ll have to stop walking into the teeth of the Summer. My body will wither and I will not be able to challenge the heat on its own terms. Maybe that year is next year. Maybe that year will come the year after. Maybe I will be able to write this again, in a decade, or maybe even two, but I know one day I will lose.  But not this year. This year I won again. 

 I wish to thank July for being a month I could train hard to do this. There were very hot days in July, and I was able to walk in the afternoons on State Route Ninety Four east. I got off work early one day and walked ten miles in heat that most people fear. Not triple digit, mind you, but still upper nineties.  July was not at all what it might have been, and I was able to build up for August, and everything after.  

 August snuck in with a blowtorch and a flamethrower.

It came screaming out of July as if somehow my walking had offended the Gods Of Heat. Good boots, a wide brim hat, a bottle of water, and the will to learn if I could be killed walking in such heat pushed me through it. August frightened a lot of people into hiding inside, where unnatural cooled air blew in to weaken them.  A man in a truck stopped and offered me a ride once, as if I was imperiled by what I was doing. He looked at me as if he were seeing a Demon, walking along the edge line of Hell.  He was a fat and puffy person who would have been killed by what I was doing.  It might have killed me too.   

But not this year.

This year I won.  

 Take Care,

Mike