Spring rolls in on the backs of the shimmering clouds of blackbirds, swarming together above rivers and fields, dancing aloft for the delight of us children. Spring is cast upon us by roiling clouds thick from treks across vast waters. Spring is the baptism of the once sleeping bear that is our soul in winter. Creeks rise, overcome by the multitude of frozen dewdrops come undone. Pieces of tree bark, shed from last autumn, combine with old fruit, forgotten leaves, dead branches, and children's mittens to clog the arteries of runoffs, forming patchwork swamps, silting the land like a small river delta, providing the growers with loamy rich topsoil for gardens and flower beds. Spring is the time of the Resurrection, the promise of the sun, and the quenching of thirsts. The herds migrate, the people open their wells, the ice packs, which scoured the granite to a polished shine, recede into dark memories. Consciences are formed from those old ice packs, and we are loathe to celebrate too decadently, for there is work to be done, seeds to be gathered, and hearths to be readied for the return of the cold.
When people ask me what my favorite season is to be working outside, what they're really asking is, which season do I hate more, Summer or Winter. At this latitude, in this climate, people either love the Spring, or they love the Autumn, because those are the seasons of great change, the time of remembrance, of temperate air. A summer rain may be a blessing, but the rains of spring and fall are pregnant with meaning, and carry a certain violence with them. To be outside, in the watery sunlight of a sixty degree day in March, is to be counted with the angels, to be enlightened in the old sense, the impassioned sense. This year, the winter was about as mild as I've seen in my nine years of reading meters. I can barely recall the number of days it dipped below thirty degrees. I must admit I feel a bit disappointed by that, as if I was robbed of a certain hardship, nullifying any glory in the onrushing Spring. It lends to the unease, the strangeness of this strange year, the year of change, of catastrophe. I kept thinking, as January turned to February, and into March, when will we reap the bad harvest of days we have sown in this field of pleasant weather? It seems as if there is a storm coming, a storm that's been brewing since the time of the first calenders. Are we in the eye of the storm? Is this the calm before the storm? Perhaps this is a product of our interference with the natural flow of the waters? Unanswerable questions flower up out of the richness of Spring, just as Pleasure and Leisure spring from Summer, Memories and Sadness from Autumn, and the Ponderance of Mortality in the depths of Winter.
So to answer the question, my favorite season in which to work outside is the Spring. Maybe as I get older I will change, but for now I'm young at heart, and the Spring is the time to sing out loud, to throw open the windows and shake off the dusty blankets, to wash in the rivers and turn over the soil. Spring is the time to awaken to birdsong and smell the dank swampy sod. We fall in love in the spring, we court in the summer, and we wed in the Autumn. And our lives are full of that first morning light.
Until we meet again...
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