June 2025
Dear friend,
It is HOT.
June in Grenoble sans clim1 has forced us to reckon with sun, adapting our behavior to it like the clever animals we are. Careful window management, strategic ice cream, fans on face, linen pants, shade seeking (and hats for the gingers among us). The highway LED signs blink at us, “ ATTENTION CANICULE - FORTES CHALEURS - HYDRATEZ-VOUS” and we do. Water bottle in the fridge at all times.
We forget that we’ve ever been cold. And it’s only June.
Meanwhile, the snow on the mountains is reduced to flecks, and fields are crisping. Midsummer flowers are blooming here and there, including garden roses, pomegranates and daylilies whose hues could make fire blush; and in the verges, bright-faced morning glory and long leggy fleabane and chicory and wild carrot and field thistle exploding into silk. The arboretum and the river path remain havens of cool tree-breath, with rabbits of various sizes never far from the edge of sight. Cicadas shrill steadily under the screams of swifts and the jangling of serins.
I’ve been thinking back to another sweltering June two years ago, when I wrote this essay about a colleague who died while mountain climbing in the Alps. In writing, I transmuted the undecipherable grief into the phsyical reality of that week: the heat, the river, the Fete de la Musique2, the trees, the surreality of daily routine settling back into itself. Strange how much of it resurfaces with the return of the season and its sensory memories.
On a slightly different note: The heat hasn’t prevented hikes from happening, including a proper escape to a high mountain pass, Col du Lauteret, and its alpine botanical garden—which was not only a perfect day but it also spawned my first viral photo.3 If you’ve joined us on account of that photo and are hoping for the “more to come,” there are a few more alpine paradise teasers rounded up below, and my next post (for real this time) will give the full treatment.
Read on for the Details…
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As mentioned, in mid-June I visited the Jardin du Lautaret with a friend and hiked the nearby Sentier des Crevasses, which was paradise from start to finish.
The Note below is supposed to show more Jardin beauties as a followup, but quirky little Substack might only show the other Note, the viral one with sunlit white anemones, that I re-shared in the same post. If so, click on the Note to see the rainbow of other flowers.
(without air conditioning)
La Fete de la Musique is an annual French tradition on 21 June where cities throughout France fill their streets with bands and DJs and everyone goes out to groove. It has the same festivity as a national holiday, and I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else.
Ironically, only a few days before my photo went viral on Notes, I had posted a reflection on how the Substack platform and community had provided me with a way of being online based on connection rather than the anonymous tides of algorithm, and I was thus annoyed with the number of viral Notes in my feed. It’s an open question whether the gods of virality decided I needed a dose of it on account of this very post. My opinions on the abitrariness and shallowness of virality haven’t changed, but it was nice to have a little influx (~3% of people who liked the Note) of new people looking for more. This little influx in fact got me over the 1000-subscriber mark, and though I try to not to put much stock in numbers (not least because subscribers ebb and flow enough that I could easily dip back below 1000), that particular milestone is hard to ignore—at the very least it belongs in a footnote, eh?
Great job on reaching 1,000 subscribers. You've been very diligent, plus you have an original and lovely publication.
Congratulations on your 1000 subscribers! ☺️