March first.
To my childhood mind, this was the first day of spring. Imagine my surprise, after a lifetime of the colonial world telling me I was wrong, to find that “meteorological spring” is indeed a thing, and that it begins on March first.
Neither, of course, is wholly accurate; the Earth decides when her seasons change, and in fact the line is never so bright as the demarcation of the equinox’s shadow anyway. Because our work revolves around home and the land now, and has for many years, we have long since jettisoned such artificial categories and modes of classification. Here in this place, the natural world has always made it clear that it decides the what and when of things, and that is all the more true now that colonialism-birthed and -driven climate-change has entirely wrecked our customary patterns.
On this day, the snow has mostly melted on the peaks to the east, leaving a scattered rime here and there and a thin blanket atop the Spoonbowl. To the south, the slopes show heavier cover, more like those north of the village in the image above. It’s a shot of the northernmost rooflines of North House that Wings caught on film some fifteen or sixteen years ago, at a time when winter here, even at this late date, meant real winter: regular snows; accumulations routinely measured in feet rather than inches.
A decade and a half does not seem like much time, but those days are long gone now.
There will be no fringe of snow on the rooflines this day, for one. Oh, there may be a pocket or two of the white stuff left in places that are always sheltered from the face of the sun, but the skyline seen here always gets the full gaze and glare of the dawn. Further out, where we live, there has been no visible snow on structures for a week, at least. Despite the cold nights and chill wind by day, the mercury has risen far too high for anything to remain save a few remnant patches on permanently shadowed bits of earth.
The slopes, of course, are another story; they received new snow only yesterday, and the altitude is enough higher to keep there for a while. Not as long as in years past; prior to 2009 or so, this time of year was nearly always a perfectly wintry season, but now winter and summer seem ready to swap space and time alike.
For the moment, though, we have hard days ahead. Spring is always the harshest season here; the most unsettled, too. We shall have many more days of winter as part and parcel of the trickster climate of spring, heavy snows that give way to instant thaws, sub-zero plunges in temperature that in the space of a day will climb sixty degrees and more. The winds will batter our bodies and our souls, the mud suck our feet further into the earth, the pollen assail eyes and sinuses and lungs.
“Will” is actually the wrong word, for all three are already doing it.
For this first day of meteorological spring, the air seems defiantly cold, unwilling to cede an inch of winter yet. The forecasts insists that there is snow on the way three days hence. But the sun still warms the earth, and its light grows that slight few moments longer. The trickster wind is a temporary spirit still; the adobe walls, so ancient as to share properties of the timeless now, remind us of the strength and the constancy of a warming world.
It will be hard, but we will get through this. Summer is not so very far off now.
~ Aji
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