Dog Days, Golden Surf
It’s officially August, and the dog days of summer are here. These are the hot sultry, lazy days. The beach landscape is filled with vibrant blue and bleached white everything from cloudless skies, but on most days the sunny lows make the wind and surf as listless as everything else. When an unexpected offshore wind popped up last weekend, we headed down. The surf was chunky, choppy, and unforgiving, but it was nice to get out and get stoked for a bit.
I caught a few really solid waves before my board popped me in the eye and I decided to take a break. It almost goes without saying that Chris surfed until the sun went down.
I’ve been really into photographing these dreamy, backlit golden hour palm trees lately. Or dusky palm trees.
Do you know where the expression the “Dog Days of Summer” comes from? Chris brought this up the other day.
The Scorpio constellation rules the early summer skies, and Orion rules during the cooler months. The very warm summer temperatures in North Africa and the Near East coincides with the rising at sunrise of the Orion’s dog star Sirius. This led to the association of this phrase with this warm temperature in spoken and written poetry of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans (including Homer’s Illiad).
