Sweltering Heat Rediscovered

July 22 - August 6

This balmy episode features special guest Elijah Sobel, discussing swimming holes. Alexis and Kit chill out by finding ways to stay cool during record-breaking hot temperatures, focusing on “cooling things” such as iced tea, goldfish, and “uchimizu.” In Hiro's Corner, a refreshing look at the coolness of far-away twinkling lights.

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Sweltering Heat Spotify Companion Playlist

Swimming Holes and Elijah Sobel

“Where the River Deepens: Exploring Place-based Relationships Through the Swimming Hole Experience” by Elijah Sobel

Want to experience the river with Elijah? Check out his company in New Hampshire: North Country Kayak

About Elijah:

Born and raised in New Hampshire, Elijah fell in love with the White Mountains at an early age with ski trips to Tuckerman’s Ravine and hiking the Presidential Range.
When he was a child, his dad, David Sobel stuck him in the front of a whitewater canoe, and he ran his first Class III rapid at age seven. After attending the University of Vermont, Elijah moved to North Lake Tahoe, California. He spent seven years working in the outdoor recreation industry, honing his passion and craft for guiding individuals and groups in wilderness settings.
In 2019, Elijah relocated back to Bethlehem, New Hampshire and currently works for Holderness School. His excitement for paddling and experiences on the water is contagious, along with a strong focus on safety for everyone.
Inspired by an enduring sense of adventure and the possibilities of sharing his passion with others, Elijah is excited to bring guided trips for all skill levels to the North Country.

Poems Featured in this Episode

Summer Wind, by William Cullen Bryant

It is a sultry day; the sun has drank
The dew that lay upon the morning grass;
There is no rustling in the lofty elm
That canopies my dwelling, and its shade
Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint
And interrupted murmur of the bee,
Settling on the sick flowers, and then again
Instantly on the wing. The plants around
Feel the too potent fervours: the tall maize
Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops
Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms.

***

Hot Weather Philosophy (excerpt) by J. H. Harding

I only wish I could believe
While here in the flesh I moan,
That heat is cold and cold is heat,
I'd make a temperate zone...
I cannot... crawl from out my heated flesh
While winds blow through my bones.
Yet, I can dream of frost and snow,
Icicles and icebergs grand...

***

The first melon
shall it be cut into quarters
or into round slices?

— Basho

***

if someone comes
change into frogs!
cooling melons

— Issa

***

the clinking of ice
even this tea perspires
in sweltering heat

— Kit

***

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of toast and tea

— T. S. Eliot

***

This edamame bean -
it flies for nine centimeters and then
enters my mouth

— Shiki

***

With a kitchen knife
choosing eels...
a cool evening

— Issa

***

Excerpt from The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame:

“The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”

***

Gently I stir a white feather fan,
With open shirt sitting in a green wood.
I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-trees trickles on my bare head.

— Li Po

***

The setting sun is shining
on the drops of sprinkled water on the road

-- Toru Sakano

***

The bustle of the alleys
Is arush with water

-- Mayumi Yoshida

***

As we wait
A small breeze alights
Off the dampened streets

-- Mieko Takanashi

***

Midday nap--
the scent of lotuses
Meanders

— Issa

***

Chased away
from my napping spot...
mosquito-spurting grass

— Issa

***

Since it's cool down there
take a little nap...
bottom of the well

-- Issa

***

The melon
can't sink completely...
the well

— Issa

***

The gleam of a goldfish
being scooped
at a festival stall at night

— Taneda Santoka

***

A goldfish seller
with a smile
on this straight road

— Hirahata Seito

***

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold —
That is the madman;
The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear.

— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, sc. 1

***

And after seven nights
of summer's brightness Weed-month slips
into the dwellings; everywhere August brings
to peoples of the earth Lammas Day. So autumn comes,
after that number of nights but one,
bright, laden with fruits. Plenty is revealed,
beautiful upon the earth.
— from The Menologium of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle