The Seasons

And then there was yesterday.

Yesterday I walked the dog in my shirtsleeves (yes, and pants and shoes). The sun shone, the light breeze blew. It was the first time since, oh, say, October, that this was possible.

Things smelled fresh and damp. It was a day for car windows to be down and moon roofs to be open. It was a day to sit on the steps of the front porch and drink a delicious Sprecher Piper's Scotch-style Ale. 60-some degrees. Sunny.

This past winter - dear Lord, let it be past - wasn't our snowiest; in fact, we're short on moisture. It wasn't our coldest, although January as a month may be close. It's just that it arrived the day before Thanksgiving, with significant snow and nasty cold, and save for a couple days in early February, it just sat down and stayed. We had several below-zero nights (read: mornings for walking the dog) in December, and about half of the month in January, and a bunch in February, and a couple in March. We had only a couple big snows, but a lot of little ones. My view is that snow is to be shoveled, and driven through, so it's generally not a positive. We had a roof leak due to ice from accumulated snow (ice damn!) and although I've avoided a bad fall this winter, Wendy wiped out once.

Here's the side note. Wendy slipped on ice when Laura was a baby, and broke her ankle. She fell again, and busted a shoulder. I hit the sidewalk hard last winter, and narrowly missed a concussion. You start walking funny on icy walks and roads, with stiff leg muscles and little stiff steps, and I swear that old people walk the way they do because they just don't loosen up one spring after a tough winter. Someone once said that you can tell the Wisconsin people on the Florida beaches in January: no shirts, swimsuits, but hunched shoulders and funny walks.

Febrauary and March are sometimes harder: the walks clear, but snow melts during the day, freezes at night, and sets up an obstacle course on the early morning dog walk. Can I see the ice? How deep is it? It it frozen all the way, or is there water under it? From a normal walk, I need to switch into funny ice steps and back out several times per block. Is it worth the rubber-trimmed boots? Do I need the ice cleats? This morning I needed to take three runs at climbing the icy slope, less than two feet, to pick up the poop. Good neighbor, my ass.

I can't imagine that folks who live in year-round temperate climates have any sense of deprivation about good weather, so they can't appreciate as we northerners do the blessing of an early shirtsleeve day. Of the warmth of the sun. Of the smell of fresh air. Of the opportunity to open the windows of the car, of the house. Of the chance to let the cat onto the porch. But we who can't count on such days appreciate them all the more.

Oddly, it's one of the joys of living in cold climates. Today wasn't bad, but it was cooler and a bit windy, and you could feel the damp in the air from all the melting. The rest of the week, and beyond, appear to be seasonal and without blizzard. Only one golf course has announced its opening, and they may be hasty. Several rivers are in flood, including those where I'm headed this weekend.

But ah, there was yesterday.