The Lost Season

From 1975 to 2025, what endures in the heat

Image: Courtesy of Canva Pro

Writer’s block showed up the minute I said I was back.

I sat in front of the blank screen and came up with nothing except a path that led to nowhere. What I have instead is a handful of fragmented thoughts circling around one theme: the feeling of a lost season.

This summer slipped away while I focused on healing. On May 5, I entered a MAT (Medically Assisted Treatment) program to detox from opioids—whether you call it an addiction or a dependence is based on who you ask. The withdrawal and recovery are the same: miserable. Today is Day 105, or 108, depending on which definition of a clean date I choose to go by.

The weeks since then have been shaped by small, steady routines: short rides on the spin bike at the gym, light weight lifting, endless stretching and flexibility work, regular trips to the dry sauna, and the slow task of moving rocks from the backyard to the front—two handfuls at a time—while reworking the landscaping and re-grounding myself to Mother Earth.

I pulled weeds from the neglected landscaping around our building, planted a single bee balm to lure hummingbirds and butterflies, walked back and forth to the mailbox, and paced up and down our 1.2 mile road, back and forth, back and forth.

None of it looks like much from the outside, but each detail was part of the slow work of recovery.

I’ve noticed the quiet here more than ever this summer. Life in a 55+ condo community isn’t exactly bursting with energy. The big activities revolve around walking to the mailbox, waving politely from driveways, or watching the sprinklers misfire onto the pavement instead of the grass. There’s a stillness to it all—no real hum of activity, no energy. It feels like nothing is happening, but maybe that’s the point.

Maybe nothing happening is exactly what recovery requires.

This summer reminded me of another, fifty years ago. The summer of 1975 was a lost season that still stands out in my mind. My parents packed us up with a couple months’ notice and moved us from Michigan to Florida right before my senior year of high school. Every plan I had for that year vanished. But the summer itself wasn’t empty. We spent it packing boxes, moving furniture, and discarding cherished items before the moving van came and erased the place we called home.

Every summer we had two acres of grass to mow. I steered the John Deere tractor in wide, wet loops, and the smell of freshly cut grass hanging heavy in the humid air. One early morning I hit the edge of the septic tank hole, sank the mower, and took out part of a blue spruce on my way down. That was the end of my mowing career. After that, I stuck to the garden—pulling weeds from rows of beans and okra until my fingernails stayed stained black with dirt.

Some days I pedaled across town on gummy asphalt roads or on country dirt paths, sweat sliding down my forehead and burning my eyes as horseflies buzzed in the air. Nights were spent in front of portable fans humming near open windows; Tiger Beat magazines sticking to my legs, Harold Robbins novels hidden underneath, while waiting for a breath of air to slip through the room or a racy sex scene to appear in my book.

Summers flew by then, not because we were doing anything great, but because we filled the hours with motion.

Now, fifty years later, I still pull weeds. I still sit in hot rooms without air conditioning—this time at HOA meetings, where the drone of bullshit conversation and the smell of old people hangs in the heavy air. I still notice lawns, though now it’s the postage-stamp, 70s-style toxic landscaping around the condo buildings, clung to by the HOA and “manicured” weekly by zero-turn mowers that roar, spin, and somehow never improve the crabgrass or the rogue weeds that keep invading. The details are different, but the rhythm is the same

The difference is how I move through it. In 1975, I made the days fly by because I had the passion and energy to do things—mow acres, ride bikes for miles, practice golf all day, and create ways to pass the time. In 2025, I move slower, with effort measured in minutes, not hours. But maybe that’s what this season calls for. Recovery doesn’t need the energy of a busy neighborhood or the spark of constant activity. It needs patience, repetition, and the quiet space to simply keep going.

This summer may not have been the comeback I imagined, but it hasn’t been wasted. Not every season is about shining. Some are about learning to sit in the quiet, to notice the small things, and to trust that even in stillness, the days are moving forward.

Next summer will carry more spark. Our move date is already circled—June 2026.

Where are we moving? That’s still to be determined. But the plan itself was enough to light a fire under me. It became the (final) catalyst for getting off opioids, for beginning this long season of recovery, and for choosing a future that feels worth showing up for. This summer may have been quiet, marked by weeds, meetings, and the slow sweat equity of healing, but it’s only a bridge.

Next summer won’t be lost. It will be the beginning of something new, wherever the road takes us. ⬇️

Image: Ciudad Perdida Lost City in Colombia Sierra Nevada