Summer Challenge Week Eight: Alfresco

Challenge #8: Alfresco. This week (and the remaining weeks of summer) take the time to be outside. Picnic, read, work, eat, daydream, lay in the sun, do something productive in a new place, or unproductive in a favorite haunt. Most importantly, savor it. Summer goes by all too quickly. For this alfresco adventure, bring your sketchbook along, or document your time outside with photos, a story, or a memento and share here on The Paper Compass

When you are someone who loves language, you know that sometimes there are words that just make your whole being perk up. For me, the word alfresco is one of them. Not only does it roll off the tongue in lovely, velveteen Italian, but when added to another word, it makes the occasion infinitely more exciting, such as, “We are dining alfresco this evening.” Not just dining, but how lovely! dining alfresco. (It is also a word that is just plain fun to say out loud.)

Alfresco, quite simply, means outside or out-of-doors. In a more literal translation, dating back to the mid-1700s, it means: a cool place. It is the perfect summertime word. And while most commonly used to refer to dining outside, for me it is a summertime mindset.

Unlike any other season, the summer is about living alfresco. The world beckons lush and humid, the days are long, the evenings soft. In the summer, my back porch becomes my office, my breakfast nook, my reading area, and general all purpose place that I can be found. I appreciate being surrounded by my potted herbs and flowers, the breeze, the light, the birdsong. With that enjoyment also come the sublime knowledge that only too soon I will be inside listening to the radiators hiss. Wearing sweaters. Drinking my coffee hot. So I know that every moment on the porch, outside in the summer, is to be savored.

More than any other time of year, in the remaining weeks of summer we should take the time to step outside. To take ourselves off to that place in the shade to read, to dine, to nap. This week, for the final summer challenge, I encourage you to be inspired by the word alfresco. Take the time this week (and in the remaining weeks of summer) to take your activities outside, whether it is reading the paper and having your coffee or even as elaborate as borrowing the office data projector and using a sheet across a laundry line to have an outdoor movie night. Be creative with your alfresco adventure, or just take the time to savor your time in the sun.

This brings us to the Eighth (and final) Summer Challenge: Alfresco. This week (and the remaining weeks of summer) take the time to be outside. Picnic, read, work, eat, daydream, lay in the sun, do something productive in a new place, or unproductive in a favorite haunt. Most importantly, savor it. Summer goes by all too quickly. For this alfresco adventure, bring your sketchbook along, or document your time outside with photos, a story, or a memento and share here on The Paper Compass.