The summer months–June, July and August–are known for being cool and foggy in Berkeley. We do have some warm days, but the most reliably warm, clear weather comes in the fall. During these months, I wear summer clothes and sandals because of the calendar, not the weather, and I bring a sweater everywhere.

September and October feel like summer. On the clear, bright mornings, the deep orange color on the Golden Gate Bridge stands out against the deep blue sky and bay. The city and the bridges look close enough to touch. Most days are pleasant, in the 70’s, but we have hot spells when the temperature gets too warm for comfort.

Since we don’t have a lot of hot weather, most houses and buildings don’t have air conditioning. My Riverside upbringing taught me to open the windows at night, then seal up the house and close all the blinds to keep the house cool until the evening. On warm Indian Summer days, our house gets up to the high 80’s before the sun finally stops beating on the front windows and the air cools down.

If there are several hot days in a row, the house gets heated up; the wood and the stucco and the attic hold the heat and radiate it back even after the sun goes down, and we can’t get the inside temperature under 78 degrees.

On those days, we long for the fog. The high temperatures to the east of us pull the fog in from the ocean. It comes pouring through the Golden Gate and bathes the bay and Berkeley in cooling mist. On hot afternoons, I scan the horizon for any trace of fog; when I see it coming, I can bear the heat, knowing sure relief is on the way.

Water is the best way to cool off.

As a young child, I lived near Chicago, in Evanston. The hot, muggy summers there stand out in my memory. I remember wanting to go with my dad on errands, hoping he would go to the bank, the only air-conditioned place I knew. Sometimes we would seek out coolness in our basement, even sleeping down there. Our favorite relief was to fill up the little kiddie pool and sit in it. My dad put the end of our backyard slide into the pool, propped the hose at the top of the slide, and made a water slide for us.

The hottest days in recent memory come from living in El Dorado County, east of Sacramento. Our first summer there, we went to a Renaissance Faire in a downtown Sacramento park. It must have been 110 degrees–so hot I couldn’t even think. We walked around, amazed at the heavy costumes people were wearing and trying to look at the booths, but we felt terrible. We couldn’t stay long; it was just too hot.

One of my daughters was beside herself from the heat. She sat down on the grass on the way to the car and couldn’t go on; she was completely overheated. The park was on the American River, so we coaxed her down to the bank of the river where people were swimming. We all took off our shoes and waded into the cool water in our clothes. It was wonderful. It saved our family trip from being a miserable disaster.

Last summer on our way home from the cabin, we took a detour to visit Arches National Park. From an air-conditioned Starbucks in Colorado, I found a place on the internet called Moab under Canvas and made reservations. It seemed like fun. I saw the forecast for 106-degree days, but I told myself the desert nights would be cool, not realizing that the cool temperatures did not actually arrive until about 3 in the morning.

We stayed in a wall tent that was like a little cabin, but with canvas sides and roof and a zipper door. It had regular beds, and there was a large trailer nearby that had eight individual bathrooms with real showers and toilets. Some people call this type of accommodations glamping–glamorous camping–but I’d say it’s more like clamping–clean camping. The neat, lit pathways and the rugs on the floor of the tents minimize the dust that usually goes along with camping. It was comfortable, or it would have been if it wasn’t so hot.

Water to the rescue, again.

The tents had hoses attached to the ceiling with nozzles that put out a fine mist. We had it going the whole time we were in the tent. Everything got wet, but we did not care; as long as the mist was going we felt cool and comfortable. For some reason, the misters were turned off by 10 pm even though it wasn’t cool yet, so we poured water on ourselves to keep the evaporative cooling going until we fell asleep.

Arches National Park was amazing. The beauty made the discomfort of the heat worth it, and the misters kept us from being too immobilized by the heat to discover it.

The other day, my husband and I were weary of the afternoon heat at home and decided to take the dog and go down to the marina. We walked around by the pier and cooled off in the breeze. It doesn’t take much water to make a difference. A little fog, some mist, wading into a river up to your waist, or even standing near it can be enough to change your personal climate.

It makes me think of the phrase that describes the extremes of possible obstacles: Hell or high water. 

Hell, I imagine, is hot and dry–the absolute lack of water. Biblical images of hell include suffering residents begging for even a sip of water. The opposite extreme is too much water: seeping, flooding, drowning amounts of water.

Somewhere in between the extremes is the happiness of being cooled by water.