Seasonal volatility

With apologies to Longfellow,

"Between the Winter and Springtime
As the sun is regaining its power
Comes a pause in the seasonal changes
That is known to make many folks dour"

March 20, 2013

Photo by J. Harrington

We've been looking through half a decades worth of March photos. This relatively short period of record prompts us to declare there is no such thing as a normal March, even less so as the implications of global warming become more pronounced. At this time of year, some years the roads have still been snow covered; others, like this year, they're bare.

March 14, 2015

Photo by J. Harrington

Some years we've had open water on the local pond; not so this year. Warmer Springs have brought us fields free of snow cover. This year, although we've avoided (so far) the East Coast's 4 Nor'Easters in March, our late snow storms and stagnant thaw left local fields still buried under several inches of melting crust. We'll get there eventually. Zen masters are undoubtedly correct when they note the problem is not in the world, but in our mind. It is our expectations that are incorrect, not the weather nor the seasonal transition. Knowing that works about as well for us as when we were kids anticipating Santa's arrival. We could count the days on our fingers, but that made the days until Santa, or Spring, no less interminable.

Compounding our perturbation with the weather is the insanity in Washington, D.C. and the madness in St. Paul. At least while state legislators attempt to substitute political acumen (an oxymoron?) for science as they debate water quality standards, Congress, for now, is reported to have avoided a giveaway of federal property to a foreign mining corporation. Heaven only knows what is actually in the "budget" bill and hat it will do to those of us who attempt to cling to some shred of belief that the future should hold more than the quarter's profits and next election's winners.

March

Elizabeth Drew Stoddard

Ho, wind of March, speed over sea,
     From mountains where the snows lie deep
     The cruel glaciers threatening creep,
And witness this, my jubilee!

Roar from the surf of boreal isles,
     Roar from the hidden, jagged steeps,
     Where the destroyer never sleeps;
Ring through the iceberg’s Gothic piles!

Voyage through space with your wild train,
     Harping its shrillest, searching tone,
     Or wailing deep its ancient moan,
And learn how impotent your reign.

Then hover by this garden bed,
     With all your willful power, behold,
     Just breaking from the leafy mould,
My little primrose lift its head!

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