Tree forts, kick-the-can, and rainy days spent creating new worlds from lego. It’s summer, and we dive headfirst into sandy beach towels, sticky watermelon hands and black fly bites. Time is fluid in the feral magic of warm, twenty-hour days.

Then, it is over as quickly as it began. With the first cool mornings of late August comes low-grade dread over the inevitable return to school — desk time, homework, and extracurriculars that have us eating meals in twenty-minute time slots.

Hold onto the last days of summer with both hands in this article for the popular science blog The Last Word on Nothing.