14 
2H E  A.U DoU BO LN Be ee ere 
ALGO NEDA 
by J. W. Galbreath 
“If you would have a greater love of Nature, grow and blossom 
as the rose. Develop first a wider appreciation for and under- 
standing of her numerous mystifying ramifications. ”’ 
Surely, Indian Summer is one of the most mystifying 
phenomena of our extreme divergent weather in the Central 
States. Indian Summer is a short period of Nature's climatic 
perfection following Squaw Winter. Indian Summer is a 
“condition” rather than any fixed time, period, or duration. 
Usually in this area of Southern Illinois, if it appears 
at all, it 1s some time in November. It is an unseasonable 
period of protracted warm, calm, delightful weather following 
our first skim of ice and killing frost. 
The cause is a stagnant high pressure system of stratified 
and stable air patterns. Suspended, accumulated dust particles, 
in the lower layers of atmosphere, create a hazy sky where 
strings of glistening glossomer float lazily across the dreamy 
landscape. 
‘Tranquil skies are cloudless, golden subdued sunlight, with 
slanting rays, softly bathing a balmy peaceful earth, with crisp, 
frosty, cool nights, extremely warm noon-time days, and per- 
fect starlit nights blended into a period of almost perfect har- 
mony, resting like a benediction over fields and hillsides. 
Thomas De Quincy expressed Indian Summer as ‘‘that last 
brief resurrection of summer in its most brilliant memorial. 
It has no root in the past, no steady hold on the future.” 
Those who take the time will experience that -feeling of 
extreme well-being, of supreme beauty in perfect harmony, 
with accompanying sadness ... a desire that this time would 
linger forever, a desire that we could appreciate it to its fullest. 
Many names have been applied to Indian Summer over 
the world. The American Indians called it the Summer of 
Old Women. It gave them a second chance to gather and store 
food in final preparation for winter. The early settlers assumed 
that the haze or smoke was the result of the Indians burning 
the prairies; hence Indian Summer. The Greek gods accounted 
for the tranquil calm as a gift to the Kingfisher or ‘“‘halcyon 
daysus 
Other names that have been applied are Second Summer, 
