Summer in New England. Maybe there’s no skiing, but there are so many other things to love.
Isn’t this why we’re New Englanders in the first place, though? Where else in the country
can you be only hours from so many landscapes and attractions?
You can be laying on a beach in the morning and then hiking a mountain by the afternoon. Take a bike ride along Lake Champlain in Vermont by day; catch a Cape Cod Baseball League game by the time evening falls. Enjoy a sunset cruise with the family in Newport, R.I., followed by a day of fun with the kids at New Hampshire’s Story Land.
We just published our annual summer issue of New England Ski Journal magazine. On the cover: The 60 things we love about summer in New England. If this issue were presenting 600 things we love about summer, we still would have had a difficult time narrowing the field.
It should be no secret that we’re primarily focused on skiing and snowboarding on this site. But when that idyllic, endless winter fails, again, to materialize and the cargo haulers finally are removed from the roofs of our vehicles (June 6 for me), the melancholy tends to fade pretty quickly. That’s because the kayak or bike rack comes out and, suddenly, we’ve got a new passion to follow.
When people discuss their ideal living conditions, many of them focus on the likes of San Diego, where the weather is considered “perfect” 300 days or so of the year. Retirees move by the masses to Florida, where they can enjoy massive levels of humidity.
They both sound like nightmares.
Give me seasons. Give me variety. Give me reason to embrace the moment. Without that variety, we’d live a cardboard existence.
So for the next few months, expect New England Ski Journal to become, well, New England Summer Journal.
For every beach, golf course, hike, mountain biking course, roadside restaurant or family activity recommendation we offer on this site, there are dozens more like them that deserve to make the cut. That’s the blessing of living in a place like New England. Variety isn’t a spice. It is our lives.
Sometimes it’s not easy to switch seasons. Growing up, the end of summer always was dreaded, for it meant “Back to School” shopping. These days, spring might deliver some of the best skiing all year, but it also comes with the knell of reality. The fact that it is summer around the bend certainly helps.
It used to be that I semi-dreaded summer and putting my beloved winter gear away. But that’s thinking about my obsession the wrong way. For summer is a minicamp of sorts for skiers and riders, a time to expand the range of our activities and the feelings they create. We embrace seasonal activities because of their shelf lives.
We’ve got it all here in New England. Apologies to everybody else.
Eric Wilbur can be reached at [email protected].
