Our Blog: Warm in December, Cold in June

Welcome to the first blog post for the AAVia Foundation. We look forward to posting about our activities, stories of our experiences, news reports, updates from our Bolivian partners, and whatever else we can imagine. Our hope is this will help readers better understand our motivation to support efforts in Bolivia for children's health.

Today, however, I wish to point to great poetry, specifically Robert Frost (1874-1963) and a poem he wrote about one hundred years ago, The Mountain (1915). 

Frost was a Pulitzer Prize winner and the first poet asked to read at a presidential inauguration when John Kennedy invited him in 1960. He used his life in New England to color his poetry with natural world imagery and colloquial speech which related to common-man life both literally and metaphorically. His work is a major part of how rural American life of the early twentieth century will forever be remembered.

While most may recall Frost's poem The Road Not Taken ("Two roads diverged in a yellow wood ... I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."), we were drawn to The Mountain and from it found the name of our blog: Warm in December, Cold in June, as it reflects where we are and where we hope to go.

In the poem, a man is visiting a town which sits in the shadow of a mountain. As he hikes toward the mountain he meets a local farmer who is walking with an ox and cart. The conversation which follows relates how the mountain's size limits the growth of the town and that there are stories of a spring at the top which is "almost like a fountain," and which feeds a brook that flows down the mountain. The brook is storied as being "always cold in summer, warm in winter." The old man, though he has lived there a long time, has never climbed the mountain or seen the spring but he encourages the visitor to consider ways to climb the summit.

Later, the visitor tries to learn more about the brook and the water's temperature when he asks:

"Warm in December, cold in June, you say?"

And the old man replies (with what I imagine is a slow, heavy rural New England accent and dry humor):

"I don't suppose the water's changed at all.

You and I know enough to know it's warm

Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm.

But all the fun's in how you say a thing"

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The poem winds down with no finality as the farmer turns to continue walking with his ox and cart. We never know if the visitor hikes the mountain finding the brook and its spring, or simply returns to the town where he started.

So goes life. We travel, sometimes to places that are "held in the shadow" of something grand like a mountain. We meet locals who encourage us to hike and explore new places. We ask questions and learn from the locals, understanding more of their past and possibilities for the future. But those possibilities are never certain and the reality that will unfold is only determined by what we choose to do next.

That defines the AAVia Foundation for the Health of Bolivian Children at this juncture. 

Bolivia lies in the southern hemisphere where, yes, the weather is warmer in December and colder in June. The peaks of the Andes Mountains dominate the geography. And we are learning from the locals so we may understand possibilities and choose our actions to better shape the future as we all climb the summit which lies before us.

--Timothy Malia, MD

Co-founder, AAVia Foundation for the Health of Bolivian Children

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