THE WOES OF AN EARLY SPRING
You would indeed be lucky to find one person who thinks like me. To suggest that winter is a partner to revere. A partner who has a character of grinding steel and arctic fist, clenched and braced for a knock-out strike. It’s unthinkable to suggest the winter this year, has been unfairly gentle. How dare I unsettle the earthly spirits of inner nature, suggesting she has let us off to easily, from a burden we are so used to in this clime of hinterland.
Yet amongst the sage oldtimers, who still care to watch and predict the weather, there is a price to pay for a weak winter and an early spring. History has so informed us, should we care to study past records, that whenever such a winter occurs, and spring buds and flowers emerge before their time, a recoil of winter snaps across the landscape, to make us pay for sloppy indifference. Like kicking snow into the face of a bully, there is a dire consequence.
It is so incredible to see this sunscape, rich and golden, making long black silhouettes through the woodlands, like retreating soldiers after a battle bravely fought. It is a heaven on earth, and the sun beats down on our tired bodies, and restores comfort and pleasure, revitalizing our will to push harder and further in mortal quest. Yet be warned, the old man grumbles in verse, about the balances of nature yet to restore, winter to winter, spring to spring; a season done no sooner or later, planting to harvest, harvest to planting.
We will be reminded of wicked spring storms that buried us in snow not so many years ago. The ice that left the lakes in late May, and the Easter Parades that had bunnies covered in snow. These watchers of the weather, chortle to themselves, about snowflurries in June, and frosts in early July. The diminished winter still coils away, tight into herself, as if planning for something more spectacular, a storm better stated, to force us indoors again, huddled to the hearth.
I have heard many of these stories from folks who had experienced many harsh and long winters, and been beaten down by the sudden outbursts of a winter thought defeated.
I listen for the sound of a wind twisting over the lake. Now I only hear the plaintive cries of the gulls over a bit of open lake. Might it be that the storm predicted, for later this week, will damn us for the rest of a reclaimed March? Just when the bare ground of old earth shows along the embankment of this Bog, it might soon be iced-over in a cruel portrait of nature’s revenge. Such is the artistry of a season scorned. Such is the misery of mortal folly, that we could naively believe, as fact, history won’t repeat.