Growing up in Maine, the summer season holds a very special place in my heart. Each year, as the mud begins to dry, there is a collective energy that can be sensed. Grills are pulled out of garages, shrinkwrap is peeled off boats and tops are taken off Jeeps. Beer starts to taste colder, music sounds a little louder and sunsets become more inviting. For a short period of time, people become immune to negativity.

The first weekend of the fall is one of my favorite times of year. At noontime on that Sunday, everyone is still holding on and fighting for every little bit of summer that they can. The realization begins to settle in: The party is coming to an end. So for one last day, coolers are filled, grills are fired up and the routine activities of summer are enjoyed. After a day of resistance fall is welcomed back. The certainty with which fall comes brings a comfort in knowing that there will always be a next summer.

Amid this crisis, there has been an absence of warming spring momentum. A different type of momentum is building: an unrest at the thought of surviving another dreary and dismal winter without the payoff of an adventure-filled summer.

But as the virus has taken away so many familiar and routine aspects of our lives, it has brought with it perspective. It has exposed the things that we so easily took for granted. With the overwhelming onslaught of depressing news coverage, and the growing insistence that summer will come and pass without so many of the activities that define the season, hope can be difficult to hold on to.

It’s useless to try to fight the changing of the seasons, just as it is useless to try and fight the changes in life that COVID-19 has brought upon us. This summer will be stunningly absent of concerts, sporting events and going out for drinks at a popular bar with friends. Any feeling of togetherness or community can be lost when the entire world has to stand 6 feet apart.

When hope feels fleeting I try to remember why I love summer, and that first weekend of fall. COVID-19 is no more resistant to time than the seasons are, and eventually it too will pass. This pandemic has been humbling in the perspective that it has brought and I look forward to when it passes, where I can return to partaking in so many of the things that I took for granted.

This time, however, I hope I can treat more days like that first weekend of fall, and appreciate the simple moments a little more. For right now, I’m OK with giving up many of the activities that I love about summer. I find gratitude in knowing how fortunate I am to have been so insignificantly affected by this pandemic, when so many others have lost so much. And hey – there’s always next summer.