White Hot Elephant

Dealing with the Heat in the Dirty South

Nine months of the year it recedes into the jungles of the South, a distant rumble of threat. It resides in the canebrakes until summoned by the greening spring. Every summer it re-emerges. The humidity spikes, then comes the heat, the all encompassing smothering heat. Stepping outside in the morning you can smell it, a sour odor of chicken litter and scorched stale earth. You know it can’t be far. By midday it arrives, a lumbering presence you cannot ignore, cannot run away from, cannot bargain with. It is hot, and from mid-June through mid-September it shall remain so. It is our White Elephant.

It has been nine years now since I moved to northeast Georgia from my native Michigan. I still work in the trades and work outdoors. The obvious question everyone asks is “How do you deal with the heat?”

In ways Michigan and Georgia are mirror images when it comes to weather. They both have three months out of the year that are pretty intolerable, just at opposite times of year.

In Michigan of course it is the winter months that are difficult. December through February are dreary, dark and cold. Living in the north, the snow was relentless, dropping one to ten inches a day, sometimes for weeks at a time. You wake up in the cold early morning, bundle up in all your winter gear, stumble out to your car, sweep off the deck and walk, then brush the snow off your car, start it up to defrost the windows and heat the interior a full 20 minutes before leaving for work in the dark. Then if you go somewhere for lunch you have do it all again- start the car, sweep it off, scrape the windshield, just so you can go get a sandwich. Rinse and repeat at the end of the day before driving back home in the dark. You start to feel like a frozen vampire. The summers are glorious, but the really nice weather only lasts three months.

In Georgia it’s the summers that are intolerable. My first summer here it turned 95 degrees on June 15 and stayed that hot every day well into September. Even October stayed hot and dry, wildfires roared through the mountains, sending smoke 100 miles south to Athens where I work, and burning parts of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge to the ground.

Since then I found out that was kind of an extreme summer, though this year is on track to rival it. It has been two months since we’ve had rain. Most summer days range from 85 to 95 degrees, with smothering humidity, especially early in the day. The last two years we actually had a lot of decent weather in the low 80’s with a pleasant breeze. Compared to Michigan there is very little wind here, with most summer days being hot and stultifying. It takes a good two to three years to get used to this.

The first key to surviving the heat is you have to learn to surrender to sweat. When I first started running I felt like my body was under attack until I got used to the feeling of breathing hard, settled into a steady rhythm and kept going. It was similar with sweating here- that feeling of being smothered, the insectile sensation of sweat running down my body. Once you get used to that feeling you start to ignore it, and even welcome it as a sign of your body keeping you cool.

The next key is hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, by which I mean water, not sports drinks. Sports drinks tend to be too sugary. I don’t buy diet sports drinks because my understanding is you actually need some sugar to help your body take up the electrolytes. Look up oral rehydration therapy. I drink sports drinks 50/50 with water or less- more water than sports drink. What has helped me even more is taking electrolyte tablets which I will include a link to here. I’m not sponsored by anyone, I’m just sharing links to be helpful. Follow the directions and use your best judgment. When I start feeling heat sick I pop two of these tablets and drink a bunch of water. Pretty soon I notice the feeling of distress has faded away. I’m still hot, but it’s endurable, my pulse slows, and I can carry on. No pill, powder or sports drink will help you at all if you’re not taking in enough liquid, so make sure you’re drinking lots of water.

Learning to control my sun exposure was a game changer for me. When I first started working here I was wearing T-shirts and slathering on sunscreen. I inevitably missed or rubbed off areas and got sunburned. By 2 pm each day I had sunscreen running into my eyes, blinding me. The solution? Sun shirts- lightweight, quick dry, SPF-rated breathable fabric. I buy the Columbia PFG shirts with the built in hood, as a buff is uncomfortable and when working I always wind up with a burned stripe on my neck where the buff rode up. Again, I’m not sponsored. The Columbia PFG is lightweight, colorfast, durable and comfortable. During midday in the sun I have my hat pulled down low and that hood pulled forward as far as possible. I haven’t been sunburned in years, and haven’t worn sunscreen since I started wearing the hoodie shirts.

in full uniform in the Georgia sun

Before I started wearing the hoodies I felt exhausted at the end of each day. The first day I wore a long sleeve PFG shirt all day I felt uncomfortable, but at the end of the day the difference was astounding- I had energy. I didn’t feel absolutely beaten down. Even with sunscreen there is something about the sun shining directly on your skin that just wears you out. I’ll never go back.

The next thing to know is that it takes a couple years to adjust. When I lived in Michigan, 85 felt oppressive. The locals all complained. Here that is a pleasant and tolerable day. If you’re in the South to visit try to avoid being outside during the hottest hours.

Obviously the best tool is avoidance- keeping cool in the first place. Get yourself into an air-conditioned university, so you can get an air-conditioned job, buy an air-conditioned home where you can sit in cool comfort paying your student loans, then go dive into your in-ground pool paid for by that air-conditioned job, or more likely, by more loans. But seriously, when it gets too extreme, you need to get inside into some air-conditioning or into some cool water. I can’t tell you how to live, but you can guess which way I lean.

On a final note- doctors say to avoid caffeine and that’s probably good advice, but this I can tell you- there is nothing better than sitting on a front porch in the heat of the day sipping a tall sweet tea, listening to the jolly chime of ice cubes as you tilt the glass. There’s something about local tradition that is good for the soul. Even a white elephant has to respect that.