{"id":39322,"date":"2012-10-01T15:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-10-01T19:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=39322"},"modified":"2012-10-01T15:07:11","modified_gmt":"2012-10-01T19:07:11","slug":"shades-of-red-on-indian-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/01\/shades-of-red-on-indian-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"Shades of Red: On Indian Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Babie leto<\/em>. The summer of old women. Even today, years after leaving Russia, that\u2019s what I always call Indian summer in my head. The stress on the first syllable, the second merging seamlessly into that bright le<\/em> of false warmth. The time of year I\u2019m happiest to live where I do, forgiving for once the winter cold that lasts just a little too long, the days that grow just a little too short a little too quickly\u2014and then seem to stay there indefinitely. The summer of the old women. I\u2019ve often wondered why it is that some elderly hags should get special claim to these days of deceptive warmth, what it is in the ember of reds and honeyed yellows of the leaves that calls to them above everyone else. It seems somehow unfair, that privileged ownership.<\/p>\n

A falling spindle of fine thread, catching the rays of the sun on its way down from the sky, letting the light play off its gossamer thinness. The flower crab spider\u2019s web carried through the air by the autumn wind. It\u2019s the finely spun yarn of a young girl who has been weaving without rest for days and nights on end. Long, long ago she was kidnapped by the sun, and now, she must spend her endless lifetime spinning fine thread for his pleasure. On the bright, clear days of babie leto<\/em>, you can see her handiwork spiraling through the air. She is the woman of the second summer. And she may be timeless, but old she most certainly is not.<\/p>\n

A lumbering long-haired creature of mythological proportions who comes out of hiding with the first notes of warmth that follow the early fall cold. His name is Baba. His hair is like a collection of finely spun spider\u2019s webs\u2014and he can use it to tickle people to their deaths. He is the true owner of those waning days of warmth, old women be damned. They\u2019d better watch out for his deceptively inviting hair.<\/p>\n

There are the more prosaic explanations, of course. The name refers to the time of renewed mildness when old women can take advantage of the sun\u2019s heat one last time, to warm themselves before the coming winter months. It hearkens back to the time of year when the field work was finally done for the season and the peasant women could at last turn their thoughts to the newly welcome drudgery of household tasks: the wash, the cleaning, the sewing. In the days of old, it\u2019s said, the onset of babie leto <\/em>signaled the proper time to start pickling food for the winter\u2014and that it was, too, the time when all old quarrels had to be put to rest. It\u2019s said that, in the first days of babie leto<\/em>, it is good luck to go hunting\u2014on horseback, of course\u2014with an adolescent boy by your side. Do that, and horses will grow brave, dogs good, and people healthy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My first memories of Indian summer are bound up with the reds and yellows and oranges and browns of autumn on a certain quiet New England hilltop. It\u2019s in a little corner of my old hometown, close to a lake where I\u2019ll one day go to summer camp and a farm that sells the most fragrant Cortland apples I have ever tasted. The corner is called Indian Village. The houses here are classic colonial, the streets, classic Indian. Seneca. Oneida. Seminole. Quaboag. All tucked away behind a protective layer of elms and pines and oaks.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s late October. Halloween, to be exact. And for the first time since I\u2019ve learned the meaning of \u201ctrick or treat,\u201d it\u2019s not freezing cold. We can actually wear our shiny costumes instead of having to pile on layer after ugly layer\u2014and who cares how pretty my dress is underneath that old coat? No one will see it anyway\u2014of second-hand clothing. I\u2019ve been invited to go out with a school friend, and my mom has just dropped me off at one of those colonial houses. Everyone is excited that it will be warm, that we won\u2019t have to run from house to house in a haze of startled frost. My host\u2019s mother looks outside the open window. \u201cIndian summer,\u201d she says. It will be a while before I learn that that\u2019s what it\u2019s called, and that it\u2019s not just a reference that the people lucky enough to live in Indian Village use as a sort of sign of their special in-ness. The memory is too neat, of course. I\u2019m sure I must have heard the words somewhere else first. But in my mind, that\u2019s when I first learned that the old women weren\u2019t the only ones claiming ownership of those early fall days. It\u2019s hard not to think of those winding uphill streets whenever the name comes into my head.<\/p>\n

No one really knows what exactly it is the Indians had to do with this time of year to have given it their name. In January 1778, J. H. St. John de Cr\u00e8vecoeur wrote a letter containing what\u2019s thought to be the first reference to Indian summer as such. \u201cThen a severe frost succeeds,\u201d he writes, \u201cwhich prepares it to receive the voluminous coat of snow which is soon to follow; though it is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian summer.\u201d Unfortunately, de Cr\u00e8vecoeur leaves us little besides his impressions of the weather.<\/p>\n

According to one account, the name is simply an accident of geography: the time of year was first recorded by early settlers in regions where Indians abounded. Others, however, hold that it refers to the haze in the air that resulted from Indian prairie fires\u2014fires that were lit predominantly in these early weeks of autumn. Yet others argue that the name is tied to the autumnal raids that the Indians paid on the early settlers, after a short lull during the colder days that came before. Others, however, are far more generous. Raids were neither here nor there, they say. Those warm days carry the Indians\u2019 name because the Native American tribes were the first to recognize the weather pattern for what it was and to take advantage of the relative mildness to lay in food supplies for the winter.<\/p>\n

Or maybe the name doesn\u2019t come from the settlers at all, but rather from Native American legend. The warm winds that made it easier to hunt and gather food, the story goes, were a present from a god of the Southwest desert, Cautantowwit, his way of giving thanks for devoted worship. In the creation myths of the Algonquin, Cautontowwit is credited for giving form to the first modern humans, out of clay or living tree. Isn\u2019t it fitting, then, that he would also be the giver of a final burst of productive weather, before the barren nothingness of the winter months?<\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s a far more cynical version of the term\u2019s origins. The settlers called it Indian summer because, like the Indians, it was fickle, fleeting, and untrustworthy. Just a copy of summer, not the real thing.<\/p>\n

It may as well have been named for the residents of Indian Hill for all the proof any of these stories has of being true. But one element seems consistent in all the tellings and retellings. The name has nothing to do with the colors of the leaves.<\/p>\n

Gradually, the term Indian summer<\/em> has spread beyond its American origins. First to England, replacing a bevy of poetic names\u2014All Halloween Summer, in Shakespeare\u2019s day; St. Luke\u2019s little summer, St. Martin\u2019s Summer\u2014with that single term. Then to France, capturing the popular imagination with the success of Joe Dassin\u2019s classic homage, \u201cL\u2019\u00e9t\u00e9 indien.\u201d (Now that I think about it, I likely heard the name in French before I ever did in English; Joe Dassin\u2014himself American born\u2014was always popular in Russia, and I\u2019d hummed the tune many a time before its meaning actually sunk in.)<\/p>\n

And the Indians and old women aren\u2019t alone. Over the years, many others have laid claim to those days of waning heat. In the southern Slavic countries, it\u2019s known as gypsy summer. I\u2019d like to think that has something to do with the colorful vibrancy of the gypsy music and the sound of guitar strings by the open fire. In Italy, it\u2019s a time of year owned by San Martino, or St. Martin. In China, the rightful heir is the tiger: a tiger in autumn, they call the warm weeks. It seems at once more majestic and more menacing that way. The names are many. The legends, more numerous still. But one thing is constant. Everyone wants to label it, as if by giving it a name they could capture it for certain, make it last, somehow, make those mystical days more real, more concrete, more weighty and momentous.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m six, or maybe seven. My grandfather and I are walking in the woods. He has made me a slingshot out of a fallen tree branch and I am busy aiming my new treasure at nonexistent targets. I don\u2019t much feel like talking. I feel his hand on my shoulder. \u201cWhat color is that?\u201d he asks, pointing with his walking stick\u2014that, too, has been carved carefully out of found wood, just like my slingshot\u2014at a nearby tree. Reluctantly I look in the proffered direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cRed,\u201d I reply.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook,\u201d he says, the word like a military command.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am<\/em> looking,\u201d I counter.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d He cuts me off with authority. \u201cYou are not. Now, what color is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen how about that?\u201d He points his stick at a tree across the forest path.<\/p>\n

\u201cRed<\/em>,\u201d I say again. I am getting angry at the stupidity of this game. I want to keep walking with my slingshot. I don\u2019t know what he wants from me, but I certainly don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d He is curt. Like me, he\u2019s clearly none too pleased. \u201cIt is certainly not red. You aren\u2019t looking.\u201d He sighs and puts down his stick. \u201cThat,\u201d gesturing with a tilt of his head at the first tree, \u201cThat is purpurniy<\/em>. It\u2019s the color of royalty. You\u2019d be hanged for calling it red. And that over there,\u201d nodding now toward its neighbor, \u201cthat is bagryaniy<\/em>. Remember that. Get it through your head. Nothing is plain red, not now, not ever. How can you look if you don\u2019t even pay attention to what you\u2019re seeing?\u201d<\/p>\n

I stamp off in a huff. I have no need for a lesson in Russian vocabulary or history, thank you very much.<\/p>\n

But somehow, more than twenty years later, the names have stuck. And with them, the colors. The one, closer to a purple, a deep, penetrating shade that seems to glow into life under the fall light, a reminder of faded royalty that appears once a year for a final hurrah: purpurniy<\/em>. The other, the color of thick, fresh blood: bagryaniy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Another lesson in Russian vocabulary. Omut<\/em>. The deepest place in a lake that has been further deepened by the current. Figurative: a deathly place or situation, that sucks a person in and is capable of destroying him. The closest English equivalent is whirlpool<\/em>. That is how Vladimir Vysotsky describes babie leto <\/em>in his song of the same title (the poem is actually by another Russian poet, Igor Kokhanovsky). The poem\u2019s parting words: \u201cIt\u2019s a whirlpool, it\u2019s a whirpool, babie leto<\/em>.\u201d I sing the song often. It\u2019s one of my favorites. I\u2019m not sure how old I am when my mother asks me if I know what it means, and I admit I do not. Now I do.<\/em><\/p>\n

At the end, isn\u2019t that the biggest gift that Indian summer can give us, whatever name it goes by, in whatever garb it appears? The gift of beauty, not just of the world, but of the language through which we choose to perceive it and with which we choose to name it. The beauty of a language that is more than description, that lets you see and penetrate the colors of autumn with new eyes. Eyes that will understand that, no matter what you say, in whatever language you choose to say it, red will never be just red.<\/em><\/p>\n

Maria Konnikova <\/a>is a writer living in New York. Her first book,<\/em> Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes<\/a>, will be published in January. She is at work on a novel.<\/p>\n

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Babie leto. The summer of old women. Even today, years after leaving Russia, that\u2019s what I always call Indian summer in my head. The stress on the first syllable, the second merging seamlessly into that bright le of false warmth. 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