Is Spring Fever Still PC?

It’s only been a little over two weeks since the groundhog saw its shadow (or didn’t see it—I don’t know which it was this time). Technically, we should be in the depths of winter, and in years past we would have been. Ten years ago we had a cold, dark February that seemed to go on and on, and since I had just gotten back from a vacation in SoCal at the beginning of the month, it seemed even worse by contrast. We’ve had barely any snow this year, and it hasn’t been notably cold, but since our winters seem to be skewing late in recent years, there’s still time for it. I’ve realized that I don’t really mind winter weather that much, except that I don’t enjoy driving in it. It’s the lack of winter that worries me.

An occasional mild winter seems like a reprieve, but a pattern of mild winters several years in a row is worrisome even for someone who loves summer. I sometimes wonder what our world will look like even 20 or 30 years from now. While catastrophic war is always a possibility, the catastrophe that scares me the most has to do with changes in our climate. Of course, many things that happen in nature are outside of our control and could also result in catastrophe, but the lack of urgency about things we could be doing to slow climate change is something I’m afraid we’ll rue sooner than we think.

What’s supposed to happen here in Kentucky is that we suffer through our Vitamin D deficiencies and complain about how dark it is for at least four months and then suddenly leap back to life again sometime in March. It may be early, it may be late—and an early spring is almost always interrupted by more winter weather—but you don’t have to feel guilty about welcoming the first signs of spring once you’ve paid your dues with a proper Kentucky winter. So it is with that preamble that I tell you that I felt a difference in the light this afternoon, that it seemed stronger and warmer, and coupled with the fact that it was still broad daylight when I was on my way to dinner, I felt unseasonably early stirrings of what I can only describe as spring fever. I felt kind of good, and then I felt bad about Feeling Good.

People around here practice a sort of “sympathetic weather magic,” which means you’ll sometimes see someone wearing shorts and a T-shirt at even the barest hint of a crocus blooming or a piece of blue sky appearing. I’m surprised I didn’t see anyone doing that today. It’s quite cold at night still, and for all I know, we could have the blizzard of the century a month from now, but this afternoon there was a distinct feeling that spring is coming on, and it’s not something you really want to say no to, no matter what. Even a mild Kentucky winter is damp and chilly and causes you to feel ready for any spring you can get, though you’re perhaps not as starved for it as you would feel under normal circumstances.

At the grocery store, they seem to have skipped directly from Valentine’s Day to Easter (if there are shamrocks about, I didn’t see any, though that may have been in a different aisle). They’ve even been dropping different songs into the playlist at Kroger after seemingly playing the same loop forever, which is probably a coincidence but has somehow become associated in my mind with an impending change of season. Not only that, but the floral department was a raft of color and bloom this evening, a gorgeous thing to behold, even if it’s only cut flowers.

So here I am, sadly enjoying these harbingers of spring, and not only that, I took pictures of the flowers at the store so that I could go on looking at them in case Old Man Winter suddenly comes back with a vengeance. Things have come to a pitiful state when you feel bad about enjoying the first stirrings of spring, so I’ll try not to let my happiness drag on any further than a few minutes. I’ve also been feeling the effects of pollen, already circulating as per usual, so this smidgen of spring is not an unalloyed pleasure. A burst of spring flowers, a stuffy nose. A chilly overnight, a dose of sunshine. Things could be worse.

Dragons Above and Other Wonders

There are certain things in life that really can’t be explained. I’m sure you could give a few examples of your own, but here’s one of mine—and I admit that I was reticent, actually reticent, about posting this when it happened because it seemed too fantastic to be believed, and I thought people might think I was making it up. I didn’t get a photo, you see, and thought I might be accused of exaggerating. I was having trouble believing it, and I was there.

However, as you know, Wordplay strives ever to tell the truth, and if we left this out, it would be a dereliction of duty, I think. What happened was this: I’d spent some time one afternoon putting together a photo essay about dragons trending in the culture. As I recall, it was right after that, as I was leaving the coffeehouse, that I walked out into a brewing storm. I drove over to the grocery store, marveling at the big mess of clouds swirling overhead.

While I was on the way over there, I started to notice that one cloud in particular had a shape to it. It was a long, black coil, like a snake, or, actually, a dragon, with a dragon head, a long, long body stretching and twisting across half the sky, and a mouth open as if ready to spew fire. I have never seen a cloud shaped like that and am sure it has something to do with one big air mass meeting another along a fairly uniform line. I know there had to be a scientific reason for that gigantic, rolled-up carpet shape, but it was still jaw-dropping, like other sights in nature you come across once in a great while. I wish I had taken a photograph, but lightning was striking in both the far and middle distance, and for safety’s sake, I stayed in the car until it all passed.

Besides thinking people wouldn’t believe me, I admit that I was so amazed by the appearance and timing of this cloud dragon that I started to wonder if it was some kind of a trick. Now, I know I once posted a blog about wild weather events I’d been caught up in and my speculations about whether someone (AKA the government) might be experimenting with cloud-seeding, etc. Even if someone is working on that, in some obscure bureau or other, I can’t imagine that anyone’s weather experiments have advanced to the level of cloud-sculpting on that scale, even if they know how to make precipitation fall.

I suppose I was trying to put the whole thing out of my mind, but I saw a program on The Weather Channel about “The World’s Wildest Weather Events” in which various phenomena like this were documented and discussed. One of the meteorologists was discussing the very rare phenomenon of straight-edge clouds, something she herself had witnessed, and she said that she had a difficult time believing the evidence of her own eyes even though she could explain the science behind it. It was, truly, an incredible sight, but no more so than what I had seen. I have to thank the meteorologist for sharing her story, which gave me the impetus to think over what I had seen and decide that, no matter how fantastic the event, not sharing it because it seemed unbelievable was precisely the wrong tack. After all, this blog exists as a forum for exploring the presence of mythology in everyday life, and if a cloud dragon appearing over your head is not an irruption of mythology into everyday life, I don’t know what would be.

When something like this happens, I’m tempted, as possibly you are, to try to come up with an explanation. I’m not sure there is one. Of course, Jung called this type of thing synchronicity and believed that it was evidence of a sort of dialogue between the human psyche and nature. Even if this is true, how it all works is still a mystery. I consider myself a capable writer, but I’m not at the level of conjuring up castles and dragons in the air, no matter how in tune my brain waves may be with the atmospheric vibe on a given day. Maybe it’s just a matter of having your eyes open and noticing things. The more active your imagination is, the more there is to see. And then, of course, you have to remember to look up.

Storm to the South

A little while ago I watching a storm cloud move across the sky south of me. I thought I could almost see a funnel cloud in the middle of it and imagined having to hide behind the counter in the cafe if it veered in this direction. The sky got darker, there were rumbles in the distance, and then it rained, but that was all. It’s been a rainy spring here but nothing very far out of the ordinary so far.

I like thunderstorms, but they’re usually milder here than the ones I remember from growing up in Florida. There, the rain assumed a tropical intensity, and lightning seemed to split the sky wide open. Some years ago, I was riding Amtrak through Iowa, and I clearly remember the thunderstorm that blew up as we were sitting down to dinner that night. With the flatness of the land and lack of buildings it was possible to see a long way, and we had an unobstructed view of the storm, which seemed notable for the intensity and frequency of the lightning but was after all probably nothing unusual for the northern plains.

I remember thinking that I hadn’t seen a storm like that since Florida. I don’t know if the spring storms are more intense over Iowa than they are over Kentucky or whether it’s the wide-angle views that make storms seem bigger. It was fun to watch the storm from the safety of the dining car, just as it’s always enjoyable to sit in a dry room, preferably in a cozy chair with a book in hand, and watch rain fall.

Not so fun to be caught out in a storm in a place like Texas or Oklahoma, though. It’s safe to say that a career as a storm chaser is out of the question for me, since my instinct is to go away from a storm, not toward it. A couple of years ago, I was on my way to visit a friend in the Dallas area, and just south of the city, I ran into the blackest, most ominous cloud I’ve ever seen, really downright Dante-esque if you can picture what a storm cloud rolling out of Inferno itself would look like. I was alarmed but noted that no one else was pulling off the road, so, like them, I just kept going until I drove out of it some twenty minutes later. There was no thunder with this storm, but driving into it was like running into a solid wall of water, and it stayed that way until I drove out from under the cloud, back into normal reality, twelve miles from my friend’s house.

Why is this mythic? Well, all natural phenomena are part of the fabric of myths and have their own gods and goddesses (we were just talking about Iris, the Greek goddess of rainbows, last week). In modern life, we talk about weather in scientific terms, and even if you watch The Weather Channel for hours at a time, as I’ve been known to do, you’ll hear hardly a mention of Thor, Aeolus, Zeus, or any other weather god from the old stories, though Old Man Winter may sometimes be mentioned in a whimsical way.

Some people like the idea of reverting to the old nature religions that tend to personify natural events and give them human qualities. My enjoyment of nature isn’t diminished by hearing it spoken of scientifically. The science of weather is complex and fascinating, and the forms and characteristics of the old myths play around the edges of my imagination when I watch weather programs or look at a storm through a window. Is there some reason a scientific approach has to clash with having an imaginative relationship to the world? Not that I can see. I can listen with interest while someone describes the dynamics of a tornado and still find that the archetypal twister in my mind is the one that carried Dorothy to Oz.

Turning of the Year

I'm pretty sure we reached the tipping point this week weather-wise, the point at which early fall slips into late autumn and those glorious October days morph into the gloomier part of November. When I came back here at the end of the summer, I was happy to at least be far away from the wildfire then burning in Southern California and the hurricanes down in the Caribbean. Late summer was still in the air, so it was hot at first, the humid, Kentucky kind of heat I'm used to. Then a period of rain set in, and I enjoyed watching it, as I had seen very little of that all summer in L.A.

I watched The Weather Channel as one hurricane after another headed toward the United States, but the weather here was generally calm. I'm not in the greatest area for taking walks, but I took them anyway, occasionally combining an errand in another part of town with the chance to park the car and walk through a leafier neighborhood. Those occasions were special treats. I have been reluctant to go back to my old neighborhood for walks, though--I have too many bad memories of an area that has changed radically from the way it used to be. Revisiting those streets would make it seem too much as if I had never left.

Last Sunday, I decided to walk near Ashland, the historic home of Henry Clay, knowing that the mild, sunny days of autumn were probably drawing to a close and wanting to make the most of those that remained. Obviously, a lot of other people had the same idea, and unlike on previous occasions, there were just too many other people out and about to make a solitary walk possible. Some of the foliage was breathtaking, and the sun was warm, but I was practically tripping over other people, so I finally called it a day.

We have had a good bit of rain off and on lately, and one or two very windy nights that seemed to mark the turn toward winter. In the last week, I've been reminded of what I dislike most about the weather in Kentucky: the cold, gray days that are so frequent from November to March. While the sameness of the weather throughout my summer in California didn't compare favorably in my mind with summer in Kentucky, just a little bit of winter in Kentucky goes a long way. Of course, with climate change, it could be a while before we see true winter (although I did see sleet and flurries one morning last week, nothing stuck). What we'll probably get is a protracted autumn.

You know it's starting to get cold when a sunny day of 54 degrees feels warm to you. We'll probably have more of those here and there, but I'm always surprised at how early November can fool you into thinking that the mild days and colorful foliage will just go on and on only to yield, almost overnight sometimes, to leafless branches and a pervasive, damp, end-of-the-year gloom. It never ceases to amaze me how different a rainy day in June is from a rainy day in December.

Ecclesiastes Says

You know what they say about the weather in Kentucky, right? "If you don't like it, wait five minutes." I've actually heard that other places lay claim to the same quip, and that I cannot attest to, but here, it's basically just a description of the facts--especially this time of year. Spring is very changeable.

Just the other day, I was covering up with sunscreen and turning on the air conditioning for a drive to Louisville on an absolutely gorgeous afternoon. The passing scene consisted of baby blue sky, greening fields, and redbuds, and the road was practically singing under the tires. Yesterday afternoon, while I was at home, intent on an online job application, a storm that looked to be God's answer to Job blew in and caught me almost unaware. While I was fixing dinner, all hell broke loose, if you picture hell as consisting of ominous rumbling, black skies, bilious light, and torrential rain. I was tending several pots on the stove when the noise caused me to look out, and it occurred to me that I might have to run for the closet, pasta or no pasta, if it got much worse. Things settled down later, but it turned cold overnight.

Today, I was back to my down jacket and gloves; there was a cold rain spitting intermittently, and spring seemed like a dream from another lifetime. I had the heat on in the car, and a turtleneck suddenly seemed like a great idea again. That's nothing, though. I have actually seen it snow in April (and once, long ago, even in May), so unless we get a blizzard, almost anything else is business as usual.

I should really be writing about the book I finished the other day, but I'm slightly exhausted by the effort I've put into job applications, so you'll have to excuse me for putting that off. Trying to discuss the ins and outs of Edith Wharton's love life seems a bit much under the circumstances, though the book was interesting and not what I was expecting. (I thought it was going to be like The Bostonians but it was more like The Paris Wife. OK by me.) I'm only too glad to be busy with applications, but what I would really welcome is results. It would be pretty ridiculous for a woman with several college degrees, numerous skills, and considerable personal charm to end up on public assistance, but that appears to be the direction I'm going in. Don't say I didn't warn you. (Yes, it is pretty weird.)

It looks like the weather is trending warm again starting tomorrow, and we should have a nice weekend. So much back and forth could be disconcerting for someone who isn't used to it, but most people around here are hip to the facts of Kentucky weather. You can go from one of those storybook days when it's almost impossible to wish yourself anywhere else to a lowering day of wet winds and chilling rain that makes you ask yourself "What am I thinking?" "Who ordered this?" in the mere blink of an eye. Oh, well, to everything there is a season--even unseasonable spring weather.

Autumn Flow

This time last week, it was high summer; today, I dressed in light layers for the first time this season. Despite the change in the weather, we haven't seen much, if any, fall color as of yet--but I don't think there's any doubt that our long, hot summer has drawn to a close. I'm just easing into the cooler weather. After three or four months of days in the high 80s to low 90s, that's what you find yourself doing. I even, for goodness' sake, found myself thinking about what I'll have for Thanksgiving dinner this year, and normally that doesn't happen until a week or two prior to the event. You know it's been a hot summer when you start thinking about Thanksgiving pie (fruit pie? or custard?) before the end of September.

I've been reading novels again, too, as something about the transitional period has seemed to stimulate the imagination. I enjoy looking at websites with fall travel suggestions, and even though I'm not planning to take any of them, they're fun to read. Earlier today, I actually got excited about the possibility that it might be cool enough to wear cords (it was, though I didn't wear any). This week's presidential debate, which might seem guaranteed to stir up emotions and opinions, sturm und drang? I watched it, went to bed, and had very peaceful dreams, waking up feeling fine the next morning.

Yesterday afternoon was actually the first day that "felt" like fall, although the change has been in the air for a few days. I wore a light sweater over a summer turtleneck to the coffeehouse, and when I got there I decided on a hot drink rather than the iced ones I prefer in the summer. I had been thinking about how few opportunities I've had this year to watch it rain while lingering over a book, something I enjoy doing, and lo and behold, an afternoon rain settled in while I was there, giving me a chance to stare dreamily out the window. There aren't too many better ways to spend a rainy fall afternoon.

Today, believe it or not, I actually took pleasure in getting twill pants out of the drawer and looking through the closet for an appropriate top layer to go over a shirt. Since I was going out walking, I decided on a zip-up vest instead of a jacket, which turned out to be just the right amount of layering. It was a moody afternoon, with a lot of gray clouds and a little light breaking through intermittently, but it was ideal for a relaxed walk--and how pleasant to arrive back home fresh instead of in a lather, as I have been doing regularly since May. I found myself in tune with the day, the weather, and the surroundings, and it's nice when that happens.

May the rest of our autumn be as blessed as the beginning. Even for someone who doesn't mind the concept of "Endless Summer" in theory, the actuality of hot days persisting throughout October (as has happened before) is not comforting. As I told someone recently, I remember when you used to feel that discernible cooling in the air a lot closer to Labor Day. We missed it by a few weeks this year, but at least we didn't have to wait until Halloween for a break in the heat.

Galleons of Night

The best word for the weather we've been having is probably "unsettled." There's nothing strange about summer thunderstorms in Kentucky, but it has been unusually scorching for June. Over the last few days, huge clouds have blown in that looked like they might have sailed all the way up from the Gulf, and there have been rumbles of thunder and showers off and on. The brief afternoon storm we had on Tuesday didn't do much to break the heat; when I walked that evening, it was like pushing through gauze just to stroll down the sidewalk.

I heard yesterday that some of the storms in the Midwest were turning out to be severe, but it looked like most of that weather was passing to our north. Nevertheless, the sky grew very dark late this afternoon, and I unplugged several appliances while waiting to see if things would blow over. The heat index was supposed to be near 110 today, and I was hoping a good storm would push some of the hot air out. That did in fact happen, though the extreme change in temperature was rather jarring. When I went outside a while ago, the wind was very cool, though the hallway of this building was still humid. We had not one but two tornado watches, issued by two different bureaus, including one in Oklahoma (and they should know).

A few weeks ago, I was nearly caught in a storm when some black clouds that I thought were moving in a different direction turned out to be heading the same way I was. How nice! I hadn't gone very far when a decisive lightning flash put an end to my walk, and I had to scramble up a bank and onto the porch of a nearby office building to avoid a drenching. The worst part was brief, but I ended up having to head home anyway because the light but steady rain that followed showed no signs of letting up, and there were a few dark clouds still on the horizon.

Even though things looked clear when I went out earlier tonight, the wind was gusting, and I decided against the risk of getting caught out in another storm. It seemed more like the interlude between two tempestuous scenes of an opera involving Valkyrie and various agitated gods than a true clearing. Also, I had seen the word "derecho" in yesterday's forecast, a term that apparently denotes very strong winds. While I'm not sure I've ever been in one, it's one of those terms like "wind shear" or "scirocco" that doesn't bode well for a calm walk in nature. It seems a good idea to avoid going out in conditions with exotic-sounding names the mechanics of which you're unsure of.

I'm still hearing rumbles of thunder, though our tornado watches have expired. Although I like summer thunderstorms, the restless conditions over the last couple of days have seemed--except for the heat--more like autumn than June. I saw some high-flying clouds streaming over the moon the other night that were straight out of some adventure story involving Gothic suspense and derring-do, something by Daphne du Maurier, perhaps. Instead of the usual suburban scene, you half-expected to see a cloaked rider heading down the street at a gallop, with a ship moored at a dock at the end of the road and mysterious cargo being boarded. However, it was merely the same old street on a cloudy summer night.

Stormy

We have been sitting under clouds here for the last several days, although it's nothing to complain about compared to the recent weather south and east of us. Within the last week or two, we've gone from whirling snow to sunny warmth to thunderstorms--and back again. Yesterday, I had to decide whether to go out for a walk in the face of a forecast calling for rain and wind, including gusts of 30 to 40 miles an hour. It was the wind that really concerned me, because I wasn't charmed by the thought of flying debris. In the end, I bundled up, grabbed an umbrella, and went, motivated by the principle that if I couldn't actually see flying houses or garbage cans from the window, it was probably best to get some exercise.

I know some people lost their lives in storms this week, so I'm not making light of the subject. I felt the same way I felt on that hot night at the end of July, when I had to judge whether it was better to stay in or to go out on a muggy evening with heat lightning causing a major ruckus in the distance. (I elected to go out on that occasion, too, and have a clear memory of nervously circling the Arboretum while a spectacular light show illuminated the horizon north and east.) Yesterday (as on that other occasion) I was somewhat reassured to see a number of other people out and about, although it's true that you can't always go by the safety in numbers thing. We could all have been swept up by a wind shear and deposited somewhere unlikely like Oz--but it turned out that the wind, though cold, wasn't that fierce. It was unrelenting but no more than you might expect from a typical day in March. We were fortunate.

It certainly looked more like March than February, with some new grass and even a few crocuses poking up here and there. The sky was very stormy, though only a few drops of rain fell while I was out. The most startling thing I saw was someone walking down the street wearing shorts, which I did think was pushing it a bit for such a blustery day. I was wearing down, ear warmers, a scarf, and gloves and felt comfortable except that the wind kept pushing my hair into my eyes. My fears of getting caught in a downpour were never realized, and I got home without having had to open my umbrella.

There is something invigorating about being outside when Nature is asserting itself as it was yesterday. An ordinary neighborhood walk takes on a heightened air of conflict, since you're no longer strolling easily along under calm skies but are actually pushing your way forward. The landscape that had seemed so tame the day before is suddenly, unmistakably alive all around you, rushing into your eyes and ears and forcing you, in turn, to assert yourself against it. Crossing a bridge over a ditch swollen with rainwater suddenly brings to mind a mountain stream, and while it's not nearly as dramatic as climbing a mountain, it'll do for the suburbs.

So I was glad I went, not only for the exercise but for the sight of that turbulent sky, full of dark clouds when I set out, and transformed into a tent-like covering by the time I got home. It hung over everything like a gray canvas tossed by the wind, only revealing regions of pale blue at the margins. It was an arresting color of blue, and I had to think of what it reminded me of. I finally decided it was like the blue soap of a steel wool pad, clean and metallic but very, very cool, as if the weather were washing the sky clean. It's just too bad it's not that easy to take care of things here on the ground.

Natural Phenomenon

I have a memory of sitting in a car with my brother in downtown Fort Myers, Florida, when I was about seven or eight, and he was nine or ten. If I remember right, our Dad had gone into the insurance company to pay a premium or take care of some other business. I'm not sure why I recall that, but I do. Anyway, it was a mostly cloudy day, late in the afternoon, and while we were sitting there, looking toward the roofs at the other end of the street, an unusual cloud formation filled the spaces between buildings to create a shape that looked, for a brief time, uncannily like the state of Florida. To my eyes, it was quite incredible.

It was my brother who pointed it out to me, and I can still remember him saying, in an authoritative, scientific sort of way, "That's what you call a natural phenomenon."

I'm bringing this up because of what happened when I was out walking Friday afternoon. It was five o'clock, probably pretty close to the same time of day as that long-ago wonder. It's also a bit of a coincidence because I wrote another post about something that happened at five o'clock a while back; if there's a quota on five o'clock phenomena, I seem to be running through it rapidly.

I had put my sunglasses on when I left home, appreciating the blue sky and bright afternoon but doubting whether I really needed them; it was partly cloudy, and, anyway, the sun was rather low in the sky. It kept peeking in and out of the clouds, but by the time I'd gone nearly all the way around the Arboretum, it was shining directly in front of me.

That's when it happened. Due no doubt to moisture in the air and the layers of clouds above and below, the sunlight shaped itself, briefly, into a column of fire, dead center in the sky. It was so remarkable that the first thing I wondered was if anybody in rush hour traffic was seeing it, too. It looked like something that, in ancient times, would have been taken by astrologers or prophets as a "sign," as in, "Yo, a plague of locusts is at hand," or at least, "It's time to harvest the persimmons."

I'm cynical about "signs," which seem to me to be overdone these days, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," but the event was beautiful and striking and certainly fit into my brother's category of natural phenomena--so I have another to add to the list of the many I've seen. I know there are names for almost any atmospheric occurrence you can think of, but I don't know what the name for a column of light is. I was mainly just happy that I had my sunglasses on so I didn't have to squint at it and also that it happened when I was facing in the right direction. It did occur to me that there's no telling how many wondrous and amazing things happen around us all the time when we happen to be looking the other way.

After the Storm

Yesterday we had a thunderstorm that, despite its brevity, managed to wreak a maximum amount of havoc in a minimum amount of time. It seemed to happen in the space of only 15 minutes. I was in the coffeehouse when it hit and would nearly have missed it if I hadn't glanced up from my book and seen how extremely Stygian the view had gotten through the front window. It wasn't even 5:30, but it looked like night was falling. It had all happened in a hurry.

Since I was planning to go to a movie, I left the coffeehouse to go home for dinner. The rain had passed over, but I heard thunder off to the east. I moseyed through quiet residential streets, not realizing the storm had done any damage until I got to a stoplight, half a mile from home, which was not working. When I turned left, I found myself stuck in a line of molasses-slow stop-and-go traffic. When I got clear of that, the next stoplight I came to was also on the blink.

When I walked into my building, there were no lights in the hallway, and an alarm was sounding insistently. In my apartment, there was no electricity at all, though I did have phone service. I called to let someone know about the alarm, discovering from our apartment manager that he had no power either. I went back out into the hall, crazily lit by a white emergency light on the exit sign but otherwise dusky, to locate the source of the alarm, which turned out to be a wall panel next to the stairs. The building seemed unfamiliar, transformed into a slantwise, alternative version of itself by the shrilling alarm and altered lighting.

I thought to myself that it was a good thing I was planning to eat leftovers anyway; my pasta salad was still chilled inside the non-functioning refrigerator. In the back of my mind while I ate was a lingering memory of the great power outage of February 2003, which lasted on my street for almost a week and for much longer in other places. I knew this outage would likely be resolved within a few hours but thought it best not to count on the lights being on when I came back home. I was doubly glad I had plans because watching a Jimmy Stewart movie in the familiar environs of the Kentucky Theatre seemed much more appealing than trying to read a book by battery-operated candles with an alarm shrieking in the background.

I took my pink piggy LED flashlight, my umbrella, and my foldable rain cape with me when I left, feeling somewhat like a Girl Scout assailing the wilderness. There were no functioning traffic lights as far as I could tell. Things were moving surprisingly well, if slowly, though I don't think I'd have wanted to be a pedestrian trying to cross the street. I encountered an officer directing traffic at the biggest intersection, but otherwise, it was inch forward, keep your eye on the cars approaching from various directions, inch forward some more, and wait for your chance to go. The slightly chaotic air gave the scene an upside-down quality that might have been more carnival-like if it hadn't also been nerve-wracking.

It wasn't until I reached High Street downtown that I finally found a working stoplight, and then it was as if I had crossed the border from a topsy-turvy country teetering toward lawlessness back into the familiar world of everyday, just by passing through an intersection. The trip had seemed longer than it was, and I was sure I was late, but by the time I found a parking spot, I realized I was right on schedule. It was as if time had slowed down in the place with the power outage, but the clock came right again as soon as I passed out of it.

The crowd was a bit smaller than usual for a summer classics movie, so the rain had no doubt kept some people home, but everything else was as usual in the theatre as we waited for the movie to start. The organ played, the crowd sang "My Old Kentucky Home," the smell of popcorn hung in the air, the movie was introduced, and the lights went down. Up on the screen, Jimmy Stewart's smiling face appeared, and we settled in for an evening of Harvey, which in itself is a comic meditation on the intersection of different worlds--one everyday, and one uncanny. It was rather appropriate, under the circumstances.

My trip home from the movie was uneventful. By the time I got back, the stoplights were working, the power was on, the alarm had been silenced, and we were back to business as usual. It was, I guess, a little reminder of how we are all, always, at the mercy of nature, no matter how secure the trappings of civilized life seem. None of us are bigger than the most fleeting of summer storms. I guess it's good to be reminded of that from time to time.

Dryads and Fauns of March

I don't know what March is like where you live, but around here it's very changeable. I remember one year when spring seemed to start at the end of February, so that early March brought warm breezes and blossoms; another year (possibly the very next one) we had a winter storm warning and blizzard conditions in the middle of the month. Sometimes, you're wearing short sleeves on St. Patrick's Day, but that may not prevent you from seeing snow flurries when it's almost April.

Last year, it seemed to take spring a long time to get here. I'd go out for walks, and it would be bright and sunny but rather cold. March seemed to go on forever in a not-quite-winter-not-quite-spring limbo, with a few breaks here and there. It seemed to me that the buds and flowers were later than usual, though I might have imagined that.

In my mind, despite the knowledge that March is predictably unpredictable, there is an archetypal March day. I have actually experienced these, often enough that they have come to sum up the entire month for me, though I think such days are relatively few and even absent altogether sometimes (I don't remember one last year, for example). It's a day that, out of nowhere almost, is suddenly mild and even slightly balmy. Winter seems to have disappeared into nothingness. The air is still and a bit damp, and you can smell the earth. It may be sunny, or it may be cloudy, but the main thing is the returning warmth that you haven't felt for months. You may have heard birds all winter, but suddenly their singing is sweeter and more eloquent and cuts through the stillness like crystal.

So far, I haven't experienced a day quite like that this year. We began the month with a snowstorm that left things looking more like January than March, except that the quality of the sunlight, when I went walking the next day, was too mellow for winter. Earlier this week, we had temperatures in the low 70s on a day that had people driving around town with their car tops down, windows open, and radios turned up. It was undeniably a beautiful spring afternoon but more emphatic than the type of day I'm talking about, which appears without fanfare as more of a subtle awakening.

As a child in Florida, I learned about the four seasons as something that occurred elsewhere, though we pretended they applied to us, too, just to be good sports. We dutifully colored autumn leaves, as first-graders, with our thick Crayolas, imagined winter wonderland at Christmas (though we might be wearing shorts), and celebrated the return of spring with pastels and Easter eggs almost as enthusiastically as if we'd been snowed in. At that time, in the simple shorthand of seasonal images, a March day would have been signified by wind blowing an umbrella sideways.

In that, at least, today was typical. It was quite windy when I went out for my walk in the late afternoon; I took a light jacket. There was a hazy sort of sunshine that was neither here nor there. Although it was a mild day, it had more of an end of winter than beginning of spring feel to it; it lacked the raw earthiness that signals true change, and there was little, if any, greenery in evidence.

If I were to imagine a presiding deity for today, it would be a minor goddess somewhat like the image I saw in the mirror when I got home, with hair completely askew. I hadn't realized it was quite that windy, but my hair said otherwise. It looked like a coiffure a headbanger's stylist would spend hours trying to achieve with mousse and special combs; the lift was unbelievable. Yes, that might be the proper divinity for today, a sort of dryad with long, wild hair and streaming drapery who causes the wind to blow by shaking the branches of her favorite tree.

With any luck, she'll soon be superseded by the divinities of damp earth and still air, who announce their presence gently, with a scattering of tufted grass and daffodils, the loamy smell of dirt, and a lilting quality to the birdsong that turns their notes into something nearly liquid.

Showing Up in Person at the County Clerk's

So, here we are, magically transported to Lapland, courtesy of a new mini-polar vortex, or bombogenesis, or whatever it is this week. Seriously, didn't I say you could never tell with these beckoning spirals? Instead of Coppertone and sand in our shoes, we're facing salt trucks and extra layers, at least where I live. So be it. Sometimes you just have to wait, relying on delayed gratification to deliver spring the same way it always does, by the calendar.

But a winter storm has its merits. I was thinking about that yesterday while warming up my car and knocking off the snow prior to a trip downtown. I could have mailed in my auto registration fee, but what fun would that be? Instead, I was multitasking: clearing my car and moving it off the street, getting some fresh air, saving the mail-in fee, beating the deadline, and, less prosaically, preparing to enjoy a walk in the snow.

People seemed to be driving cautiously, and I arrived downtown without incident, parking behind the old Carnegie Library. Gratz Park is pretty in any season, and swathed in snow, it looks like a Victorian Christmas card. On foot, I headed down Market Street, past the Gothic church with the pretty little hedge garden, and turned left on Short. I walked past the little clock shop, which doubles as a magic and novelties emporium, and encountered a parking lot attendant shoveling snow. I found myself in a wind tunnel, with icy air whipping around the buildings and hitting me head-on, the Lexington mini-version of Chicago. I was now thinking less about fresh air and more about getting warm and actually jogged around a slower moving pedestrian near the courthouse.

After a brief stop to warm my hands and get cash for the County Clerk's office, I was out again in a white world of big, swirling flakes. I was by no means the only person out; walking, while requiring more energy than usual, was not especially hazardous--just cold. Once inside the Clerk's office, I saw that my calculation had paid off and that the line for auto registration had only a few people. Waiting for my turn gave me a chance to warm up again. A few minutes later, new sticker in hand, I glided back into the snowstorm, doing my own version of the Waltz of the Snowflakes, minus the toe shoes and a little of the grace.

The park in front of the main library, on warm days, is full of people lounging; there was none of that yesterday, as anyone who was out was moving with purpose. I noticed the construction zone across from the park before I slipped across Main Street, sallied past the courthouse, and turned left. After seeing my reflection in a store window and deciding that I could pass for an extra in either Doctor Zhivago or The Snow Queen, I stopped under an overhang to brush off snow and stamp around a little. Pressing on, I turned right on a quiet, pedestrian-free Upper Street and enjoyed the fact that I was out of the wind.

Along the little street next to the church, past the brick wall and the perfume shop, and there was Market Street once again. I took a minute to notice the stateliness of the Carnegie Library as seen from the front, solid and elegant amid bare trees and snow, and reflected that if I were a visitor, I would be exclaiming over the loveliness of this town. What's commonplace often fails to impress because it's so familiar, but catch it from the corner of your eye, or from a different angle, or with the context slightly altered, and you see it anew. If I had been hoping for a moment of beauty on my little walk, this was it.

I glissaded the rest of the way to my parking spot thinking about the fact that I'm (unavoidably) always affixing a new license plate or sticker to the back of my car on a cold winter day, often an icy or snowy one, and this year would be no different. But now that I had walked and driven the snowy, bombogenesed streets of home, which took a little more work than usual, that chore in the parking lot would seem less of a burden. A little fresh air will do that for you.

The Winter of Our Polar Vortex

Before this week, I'd never heard of a polar vortex, and now here we are in one. It's an interesting phrase. The words conjure up an image of swirling ice and snow, a gigantic moving whirlpool sucking polar bears, igloos, sleds, Olympic ice dancers, and anything else in the vicinity through a black hole into some alternate universe. I picture it working like the "Wood Between the Worlds" in Narnia, where jumping into a forest pool takes you straight to a different world. I might jump in it myself if I thought I would land in the tropics, but you never know with these magic portals.

The more mundane reality is that around here it hasn't been much different than any other cold spell, although you do have to bundle up excessively. If you go out only for a moment, to check the mail, you don't really notice it, but if you stay out any longer, like I did while deciding whether to put something in the recycling bin, you realize fast just how glacial the air is. People seem to be going about their business, though, and we were lucky not to get a lot of snow and ice. I've been at home, making the best of it, which for me means writing and spending time in the kitchen, both of which are safer than outdoor activities. (Of course, much depends on the kitchen and the writing; both are usually safe as practiced by me.) Spicy music on the stereo also helps.

It's nice to be able to escape to a warm climate if you can, although some of us cannot. When I was in grad school, winter breezed by me because I was commuting regularly to Southern California. I often had to change my clothes when I got there, tucking my coat into my suitcase and sometimes even changing my outfit. I also remember a couple of January trips to Florida that revealed just how wonderful it can be to trade a frozen landscape for an ocean the color of turquoise green. I once drove to the Keys for a writer's conference, going, unbelievably, from an overcast Kentucky winter to a humid tropical thunderstorm in the space of a day.

To everything, there is a season, though. I remember a monumental snowstorm of 20 years ago (for us, that means more than eight or nine inches), which was followed immediately by a precipitous temperature drop. We ended up with roads thickly covered in ice, on which it was possible to slide even while stopped at a light, as I discovered in my Toyota. The main thing I took away from this, aside from a new aesthetic appreciation for dry pavement, is a memory of a stuck car I saw on my way to work one morning. On a busy street, near downtown, this car was stranded on a hill, and a number of passersby had stopped to help. As I watched, the group pushed and rocked and strove until the car was finally free.

You might think that after several arduous minutes of laboring in freezing cold and deep snow on a slippery hill to free a stranger's car, people would look a little worse for wear. After all, they had places to be, too, and might now be late getting wherever they had to go. Actually, they were all smiling and laughing. There was a great camaraderie about that scene and a lot of jubilation; I've thought about it many times since. Sometimes it takes a harsh spell of weather to show you how good people can be. Tough conditions give altruism a chance to shine.

I guess I would have missed that scene if I'd been in the tropics, so maybe it was good I didn't manage a winter vacation that year. It's good to have a few memories like that tucked away in your pockets for later viewing. Of course, I like tropical sunsets and sandy beaches as much as the next person, but if not for the contrast with all these winters, I might not appreciate them as well as I do.