Porch season

Up north, people move indoors in October. Down here we move out.

For about five months, most of us live in air conditioning with the blinds half closed. Then the humidity breaks, and one evening you step onto the porch and don't immediately step back in. That's the start of porch season. It runs until about April, and it's the reason a lot of us put up with the rest of the year.

I write out there whenever I can. There's no real reason it should work better than a desk, but it does. It could be the noise. The neighborhood keeps talking to itself out there. There's a dog two houses down with strong opinions and somebody's wind chime that never quite resolves. A car goes by slow with the windows down. Inside it's quiet and I stare at the page. Outside there's always something half happening, and half-happening is where ideas come from.

A lot of what I've written in the last year started on a porch between October and March. I didn't plan it that way, I only noticed it later. The easy months are the productive months, because I'm actually outside living a little. You can't write about a place from behind a closed window.

So this is my small, sincere recommendation for the season: drag a chair outside tonight. Leave your phone inside. You don't have to do anything out there, and that's sort of the point.