Spring Tirade

            As I walked into a shop in the valley yesterday, the saleswoman said to me, pleasantly, "Isn't it a beautiful day?"

            Uh-oh. Button-pusher.

        Outside the shop, the sky was a soaring ultramarine blue. The sun was gentle and pleasing, like the smile of a child. The temperature was shirt-sleeve warm. After days of fog in the valley, this kind of weather was enough to put a lilt in anyone's step, a song on anyone's lips, a smile on anyone's face.

            Except mine.

            "No, it's entirely too warm!" I exploded. "How can we enjoy spring when we haven't had winter? What's it doing being spring already, anyway? It's only the first week of February! We don't deserve the warmth of spring when we haven't had the cold of winter. I want cold weather. I want snow, rain, storms. I want a winter that is winter. I want ­– "

            Suddenly aware that the woman was looking shocked and confused, I tried to back-pedal. I conceded that it was a beautiful day and mumbled something about appreciating it, but once the bomb has been dropped, the damage has been done. I bought a pair of $12 earrings and slunk out of the shop into the beautiful outdoor weather that I am so sorry to see. I think I heard the woman say to her colleague behind the counter as I left, "What an unpleasant woman."

            This week's post on my sister Laura's blog (naturebasedblog.com) caused another rant. She said she loves the flowers that bloom in winter, like mahonia and lenten roses, which, thank goodness (I say), are spring flowers in Oregon. I don't want to see flowers in winter. Spring owns the flowers. Winter owns the snow and rain. Primroses in bloom, daffodils breaking ground, crocuses that everyone is so cheerful about? – I want to shove them all back into the earth. Not yet, darn it. It's too early!! Give us a winter first, so we can rejoice to see the flowers.

            Laura wrote that on Groundhog Day, "I threw a party for all the groundhogs in my back yard, set up a tent and offered umbrellas so no one would be scared of a shadow and jump back in the ground again to prolong winter." It's true that she lives in Georgia and so had the kind of winter, this year, that makes a spring day most welcome. I, on the other hand and on the other side of the country, was glumly watching a cloud-pimpled sky that promised neither rain for me nor shadow for the groundhog, who would be cavorting in spring already when I don't want spring yet.

            It's not that I don't like spring. In my nature journal of 1998 I wrote, "Today was the day I've been waiting for – warm, sunny – blue sky. It was a delight, a truly glorious spring day. I planted my peonies at last, hauled dirt for the upper beds, fed roses, wisteria, apple tree –." 

           The date, however, was April 17, not February 7.

           Part of my grumpiness at the "beautiful" weather this month is that I like the cold. ("You can have it," my father once said in disgust.) Part of it is that I love cross-country skiing, and I've only been able to ski twice this winter. No snow, no skiing. But the bigger part is that a warm winter means summer drought, and even if I didn't like winter, I would put up with months of snowstorms and torrential rains in order not to endure the long, hot dryness of summer. If temperatures are in the fifties and even sixties in the winter, what will they be in the summer? My quarrel there, too, is more than that I hate such heat. Without snow in the mountains, our springs and creeks diminish and dry up. The mountain forests dry out like kindling set for summer lightning. Fires rage. My tirade in the shop yesterday was about more than not being able to ski.