Monday Morning, February 16th, 2009
It's begun to snow outside again, a fact for which I am very glad. The return to freezing temperatures the past few days, after the thaw earlier, did not entirely reassure me that we were still in winter's grip. But fresh snow, no matter how little, is reassuring. Still, it would seem that the fabled time of "Deep Winter" is over, and the long, chaotic scramble towards summer has begun. Already, the great masses of air are shifting all around us; a huge, squally wind out of the Nor'east shook through campus on, I believe it was, the thirteenth; the old snow, which had been in place on the ground for weeks or, in some cases, months, has done much melting, revealing spartan mosaics of brown and green turf grass underneath. I can see the buds on the great Elm north of Nutting Hall, and on the silver maples that line Sebago road. Robins have returned, and prance, red-breasted and proud, 'neath the still-barren limbs of the ashes and the grim south facade of the library. Doubtlessly they've been driven back to their winter roosts in Connecticut or Long Island or wherever they go by the 10˚F weather we had the other day. But the point is, the seasons are changing again; now is the time for the Maple farmers and the Avery Coonley School kids to run out and tap their trees for the sweet sugar within. The seasons are changing again.
But I have learned, this winter, at least some part of how to cope with these months of darkness and cold. They are still far from my favorite season; no, they disagree with me on too basic of a biochemical level, and I blame my increased moodiness of the past several weeks in part on the fact that Winter has finally "gotten" to me. But I have learned enough to be sad at winter's end, and to hope for a few more weeks of truly Deep Winter, when the ground is covered with whole feet of snow, and the temperatures reach down below 20˚F, below 10˚F, on a regular, or daily basis. When the clear nights, dominated by either the full moon or Venus, are almost intolerable and lovely.
Anyway, that's about enough maudlin musings for now; I've got to go back to finishing up my rewrites for FES 456 - Tree Pests & Diseases (with Dr. Livingston!)
Almost intolerable since 1986,
--mark
But I have learned, this winter, at least some part of how to cope with these months of darkness and cold. They are still far from my favorite season; no, they disagree with me on too basic of a biochemical level, and I blame my increased moodiness of the past several weeks in part on the fact that Winter has finally "gotten" to me. But I have learned enough to be sad at winter's end, and to hope for a few more weeks of truly Deep Winter, when the ground is covered with whole feet of snow, and the temperatures reach down below 20˚F, below 10˚F, on a regular, or daily basis. When the clear nights, dominated by either the full moon or Venus, are almost intolerable and lovely.
Anyway, that's about enough maudlin musings for now; I've got to go back to finishing up my rewrites for FES 456 - Tree Pests & Diseases (with Dr. Livingston!)
Almost intolerable since 1986,
--mark