HERBY ASPARAGUS POTATO SALAD + A BRUNCH PICNIC.

In the summer, we left Hawaii. We packed suitcases and blew up inflatable neck pillows and got on planes and went places that looked nothing like Maui. The air smelled different everywhere. The trees captured a different light. In Sacramento, with my father’s family, I smelled hot plums on asphalt, juice corroding into sugar. In Indiana, where my mother’s family lived, we ate tantalizingly white veggie lasagnas, drenched with unidentifiable cheese. During these summers, I discovered fireflies. I picnicked outside in twilight. I learned about my ancestors.

Bob (or Robert, if we’re being formal), my mother’s father, was an entrepreneur and an environmentalist. He owned the first department store in South Bend, Indiana, replete with furs and perfume fountains. He tended to an orchid collection. He fished the St. Joseph River. And, in the years before he died, he established a performing arts center that became home to the annual Firefly Festival. I met him just once, when I was six months old. He and my Grandma Florie gathered everyone in the family on the Big Island as they made their way west to Japan.

Bob started a movement to clean up the St. Joseph River in the 1950s, at a time when Studebaker, Bendix, and other local manufacturing plants dumped waste directly into the waterways. My Aunt Cathy proudly remembers him receiving death threats for his efforts, which ultimately earned him a position on the Parks Commission. Through the commission, he established St. Patrick’s Park and the Firefly Festival.

Together, he and my grandmother traveled the world. As a little girl, my summer nights in South Bend often ended awash with sepia faded photographs of my grandparents posing, casually stoic, in front of exotic monuments and even more exotic animals. I may not have known my grandfather, but his legacy was always palpable. He was there every time I ran down to the river, every time we picnicked, every time I saw a firefly.

This summer, in my grandfather’s honor, I’ve decided to picnic all I can, beginning with this adventure my friend Chad and I took to my favorite park nearby. Though we debated brunching indoors, one easy frittata, one cheese and fruit plate, and one warm herby asparagus and potato salad later, we were basking in the morning breeze on the shaded slopes of Wattles Park. Some puppy friends even came over to cuddle, lured by our stash of Naked Juice’s Pressed cold-pressed juices.

I’m usually a diehard green juice fan, eschewing the sweet rootsy varietals, but these flavors completely changed all that. Every single juice is extraordinary, from the spearmint-kissed Hearty Greens to the vanilla-laced Lively Carrot. And as someone who prefers to have at least five beverage options per meal, this hydrating array was pure heaven.

As we ate and sipped and swayed to Betty Who’s dreamy new I Love You Always Forever cover, I let myself sink into the quiet sanctuary nature provides. Green in every direction. Light refracting through leaves. Breath in. Breath out. Stillness. I imagined how my grandfather must have felt exploring the woods and rivers, fighting for their preservation.

My grandfather’s death has, to me, always been tinged with as much romance as his life. I don’t want to start any family feuds so I won’t name names, but years ago someone told me a story of death that was so astoundingly brilliant it’s stuck with me ever since—even though other family members have since denied its veracity.

The story went something like this: One night in Tokyo, after he had eaten an entire pint of macadamia nut brittle ice cream, after he and my grandmother had sex, he thanked her, rolled over to his side of the bed, had a heart attack, and left this earth. Regardless of whether or not the story is true, it struck me as one of the ultimate ways to go. I wish I could have shared more than six months of my life with my grandfather, but I also know that, in the grand scheme of epic endings, his was one for the books.

This death fell under the category of dying relatives my Aunt Wendy calls “the drop deaders”—those who were lucky enough to go quickly. Of course, that says nothing of the struggle endured by those left behind, of the challenges my grandmother faced as she had to bring him back to Indiana entirely on her own.

Long after my grandfather left this earth, his passion for the beauty and stillness and sweetness of the outdoors remains. It lives in every one of his children, living and dead. It lives in me. This summer, I will picnic (and drink all the cold-pressed juice) in his honor. In honor of all of us who’d rather eat outside, immersed in light and shadow and green.

This herby asparagus potato salad is the perfect accompaniment to every picnic and summer bbq, every Fourth of July party, every sunset flooded dinner party. It’s got a wild shock of fresh mint, parsley, and chives, tangy stone ground mustard and red wine vinegar, and the sweetness of baby fingerling potatoes. Happy summer picnic season! Drink in every moment.