We're longing for Indian summer – whatever that is

No one — not even skiers, sledders or snowmobilers — squanders a stretch of Indian summer.

The luxury of eating lunch outdoors in shirtsleeves or working up a sweat while walking the dog is an experience we won't have again for months.

Most of us understand Indian summer as that brief stretch of suddenly balmy weather that arrives after the mercury has descended to well below freezing, putting the kibosh on the last of the greenery and sending us scrambling for our gloves.

Yet it is curiously, and rather delightfully, undefined — more folklore than fact.

"It's not rooted in anything, the way we do weather forecasting," said Dan Luna, who manages the state Weather Forecast Office in Chanhassen. "In my opinion, it approaches a folklore, Farmer's Almanac kind of status."

Still, given the controversy around the Washington football team calling themselves "redskins" — a term that American Indians consider highly offensive — it's worth wondering whether Indian summer carries the same affront.

"To me, it's kind of shades of gray, with what's appropriate and what's not," said Anton Treuer, executive director of the American Indian Resource Center at Bemidji State University.

Treuer said the term isn't indigenous to the Great Plains, but came from somewhere else.

Where? Good question.

Some of the explanations include:

It comes from the early Algonquian tribes, who believed that the warm wind was sent from the court of their southwestern god, Cautantowwit.

It comes from early settlers in New England, referring to the period when Indians made their final preparations for winter, often burning grassy areas to flush out game for one final hunt — which explains why Indian summer is associated with hazy skies.

It comes from early settlers who, with the arrival of wintry weather, left their stockades unarmed. But a stretch of sudden warmth enabled the Indians to "have one more go at the settlers," who called it Indian summer.

That last theory comes by way of "The Old Farmer's Almanac," which offers these criteria to distinguish Indian summer from simply nice weather:

• The atmosphere is hazy or smoky, there is no wind, the barometer reading is high, and nights are clear and chilly.

• The warm days must follow a spell of cold weather or a good hard frost.

• The conditions must occur between St. Martin's Day (Nov. 11) and Nov. 20. For more than 200 years, the almanac has decreed: "If All Saints' (Nov. 1) brings out winter, St. Martin's brings out Indian summer."

"A lot of people don't know enough to know what they don't know," he said. "We don't really think critically about some things, and there are negative connotations.

"The fact that we're having the conversation says something positive, too. At least there's a growing awareness which, to me, is progress. It's when we assume that everything is right and dandy and everyone who's offended is unreasonable that the worst marginalization occurs."

However it's defined, Indian summer is a moment for which we yearn. The thermometer may read no more than 60, yet the warmth feels all the more glorious because we've imperceptibly already begun to get used to the chill.

Of course, we're never sure it's the last time until the anticipated next time fails to arrive.

By that time, though, we'll have found our gloves, and weather on.