Summertime and the living is different

RECREATION AND LEISURE

By Randy B. Young
Correspondent

Traditional calendars may be immutable, but seasons, in my opinion, are relative—relative to where you live, work, and play. For example, it’s May everywhere on Earth, but it’s winter somewhere. Somewhere, there is snow on the ground or even in the forecast. Someone is still lighting a fire and cursing the cold.

To those ends, summer is descending quickly in Chapel Hill, though perhaps not on the calendar, where Sidereal summer is still weeks away, but certainly on the academic calendar. And if you’re living in Chapel Hill or Carrboro, if you’re working at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) or at almost any educational institution, the academic calendar rules supreme.

UNC just celebrated its 2025 graduation class on Sunday, May 10. On the academic calendar, it’s the beginning of the end of another year.

Accordingly, our local community will undergo its usual cyclical changes as the University releases thousands of joyous students into the world. However, UNC Commencement sends graduates, educators, and local residents through the gamut of emotions.

During the weeks leading up to graduation day itself, Chapel Hill contended with the typical storm before the calm.

As in graduations past, we’ve contended with grown-up parents—educated and everything—who suddenly become baffled by traffic or parking. We’ve seen full luggage racks atop double-parked cars. We’ve witnessed PhD graduates who can’t be trusted to cross a street safely. We’ve seen a run on cardboard boxes at the ABC Stores.

There have been long hugs on the quads and street corners, long lines for photos at the Old Well, heavy sighs, and long last looks through red eyes at this southern slice of blue heaven and the promise that is UNC.

And then, they’re gone.

Barring summer school students or those in grad school, a vast percentage of the people who fill our streets and businesses have either retreated to their hometowns to recharge their batteries or battened down the hatches and sailed off for their New World.

Some locals celebrate. Some say, “Well, good riddance!”

Ironically, some would prefer this University town without quite so much “university.” I heard tell of one educator who actually preached at a UNC faculty forum that… “the University would be a great place to work if it weren’t for all of the students.”

It’s understandable. After all, there are admittedly many things to celebrate around Chapel Hill and Carrboro in the wake of so many departures.

Check-out lines at Harris Teeter or Food Lion are a breeze, dinner reservations are rarely needed, and parking spot safaris are typically shorter. Outdoor dining options line Franklin Street into Carrboro, where buskers’ melodies emanate from recessed doorways. Locals can actually get a beer or drink without wading through the maddening crowd. Campus tour leaders present a calmer campus as they detail the histories of the Davie Poplar, the Old Well, or the Morehead sundial.

“Thank goodness,” some will say. “We finally get the town all to ourselves again.” 

In fairness, that much is true. We residents have indeed got much of it to ourselves. The town breathes a heavy sigh, stretching the arms of its oaks over sparse quads, and we are left with a sense of relative calm and quiet.

It’s Chapel Hill and Carrboro without the transients, noise, or frenetic pace. We celebrate community at outdoor concerts and plays, pick strawberries at local berry patches, choose from the watermelons or fresh tomatoes at farmer’s markets, and lick ice cream on the front porch of Mapleview Farms. We splash in outdoor pools and frolic at playgrounds. We meet for a snack, beer, and live music on the Weaver Street lawn. We pick up our kids from the same summer camps and vacation Bible schools.

When the town loses so many from its population of 18-22-year-olds, perhaps it enables us all to reflect on the summers of our own youth—that languid season described by poet John Tobias as “that certain summer when unicorns were still possible…when the purpose of knees was to be skinned.”

Campus quads lose their bustle a bit during the summer in the wake of the University of North Carolina’s commencement this past weekend, as Chapel Hill dons its summer best. Photo by Randy B. Young

Yes, it’s certainly different here during the summer. A bit of downtime is necessary, but it’s not necessarily better. One cannot extricate the “gown” from our local “town and gown” essence without doing a disservice to both. Chapel Hill has been rated one of the best college towns in America, and to deny that is to deny our very character.

It could be argued that Chapel Hill and Carrboro truly shine in the summer sun—that we really glow when fewer are around to bask in it.

Sure, there can be a bit of noise and chaos during the academic year here, but we can’t be Grinches who begrudge our Whoville its “jing tinglers” and “Tartinkas,” thinking that this would purge all of our community’s peccadilloes.

Then again, according to Ecclesiastes (and musical group The Byrds), “to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose.” Now is our time to catch up with neighbors, reflect, and regenerate in preparation for school to start again, fulfilling the cyclical nature of our community’s metabolism.

And chances are, once we’ve ticked off summer’s boxes—the camps, that family trip, the fireworks, the concert on a lawn, the garden parties—we’re found twiddling our thumbs while cowering in the August heat and humidity.

Former UNC Chancellor Paul Hardin once said that he felt the beginning of the first day of fall semester classes was New Year’s Day in college town. That day feels a long way off, but it’s not, and I’ll be ready to welcome a new population to town when that time comes.

I love summer in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, but to bemoan the students’ return is to deny our DNA: it’s disingenuous. After all, the start of school brings thousands of fresh faces eager for experience. It’s a shot of adrenaline,” and there’s heightened energy everywhere. Blues are Carolina bluer, conversations are more vibrant, campus sidewalks grow busy, music blasts from fraternity windows, Kenan’s stands fill, Franklin Street bustles, and somewhere “Hark the Sound” is playing.

So, happy summer, locals. Exhale, climb a tree, skin your knee, do cannonballs at the local pool, sip your sangrias and sweet teas, rest, heal, and bask a bit. But know that New Year’s is just around the corner in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, at least. And that’s a day worth celebrating.

A Dartmouth College graduate, Randy B. Young first worked as an award-winning advertising copywriter in New Hampshire, then in communications at UNC for over 30 years. He maintained an award-winning newspaper feature covering Recreation and Exercise in the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Orange County. Retired and living in Chapel Hill, Randy continues to write for regional publications both locally and in New England, and his book, And the Stars Flew With Us, is available through Amazon and at independent bookstores. He coaches track at Chapel Hill High and has a photography business, Pierless (sic) Photography. This reporter can be reached at: Information@TheLocal Reporter.press