So much depends

On Tuesday, the temperature in Keene clawed its way into the 50s; on Wednesday, it cowered in the 30s, and the sometimes-springy, now-rainy weather has been all over the meteorological map ever since. Is it any surprise I’ve been fighting a cold all week, my voice growing raspy and threatening to give out entirely when I’ve lectured, and a persistent cough occasionally interrupting sleep?

So much depends upon a stack of red and green wheel-barrows linked and locked outside the local Wal-Mart, beside the red and yellow lawn-mowers. During a week when spring seemed indecisive–a season when new bicycles line up beside still-necessary stacks of firewood–folks in Keene need a tangible, persisting reminder that spring, green yards, and bountiful gardens will happen, eventually.

And indeed, as I stopped to snap these pictures the other night, a passing man paused to look longingly at the lawn-mowers, their sleek and shiny forms pointing to the promise of dry, warmer days when grass grows and weeds flourish. Even in early April, it doesn’t always feel like spring, but a soul can look upon a wheel-barrow and dream.

 

The end…eventually?

I don’t usually snap photos while driving between Massachusetts and New Hampshire…but who can resist a truck that makes perfectly clear THE END is near? (For the record, I wasn’t tailgating: this is a zoomed and cropped shot.)

I would have thought The End of Winter was near now that a small cluster of snowdrops are blooming in their accustomed spot here in Keene…and yet, the forecast calls for some six inches of snow to drop on southwestern New Hampshire by tomorrow afternoon. Luckily I’m heading back down to Massachusetts, where nothing worse than a little wintry mix–not exactly The End of the World–is forecast for tonight. The End of Winter will arrive even in Keene…eventually.

 

Risen again

Just in time for Easter, yesterday I spotted the first crocuses of spring, blooming along the leaf-littered edge of the same yard where I’d spotted this year’s first snowdrops. What better metaphor of resurrection do you need than the poking of fresh new flowers out of last year’s dead leaves?

This afternoon, J and I tackled our own portion of last year’s dead leaves: one last batch of autumn that an early snowfall had left buried on J’s yard for the winter. Raking last year’s leaves from under one of J’s shrubs, I found snowdrops blooming there, too, completely buried in leaves. What sort of faith–what kind of tenacity–inspires a flower to bloom without ever having seen the light of day?

Spring in New England feels a bit like that as you move forward toward a season you can’t completely see: “This,” you tell yourself, “is the direction I remember spring as being.” Earlier tonight, our yard-work done, J and I took a sundown stroll and remarked on all the leaf-bags we saw lined in front of neighbors’ houses: on a mild March weekend, everyone’s been out raking and bagging that last batch of hitherto buried autumn. There’s a good deal of faith–a tremendous amount of tenacity–in that endeavor, too: an unspoken hope that if you uncover the cold, winter-blanched earth, the soon-to-be-spring sun will awaken life from the dead.

 

In-between days

T.S. Eliot said that April is the cruellest month, but in New England at least I’d argue for March. Now in March, Massachusetts ballfields are bare…and muddy. Imagine being a New England kid who’s just itching for the Little League season to start, and all you see in the place of a field of dreams is a field of mud.

As I explained this time last year, “March madness” in New England doesn’t simply refer to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament; it refers to The Big Itch we all feel here in the Northeast as spring is in the air but not yet entirely arrived. This morning, the sun was shining and suburban birds were singing…and the temperature was hovering around freezing. Yes, we can see the ground; yes, the snowdrops and crocuses are poking tentatively out of the earth…but at any moment, we New Englanders know the weather will turn, we’ll get one (or two, or three) more snowfalls, and it will feel like January or February again, not the “spring” announced on our paper calendars.

But, hope springs eternal, especially in spring. In the process of making travel arrangements for the May conference I’d mentioned earlier this week, J and I discovered that the 2008 ALA conference in San Francisco perfectly coincides with the Red Sox road schedule, so we’ll be able to continue last year’s tradition of seeing our hometown boys on the road (this time in Oakland), where we can actually buy face-value tickets rather than paying an exorbitant amount of money to set foot in Fenway Park.

So while Curt Schilling and Kevin Youkilis are blogging in Japan as they continue to train for the Red Sox international season opener against (yes) Oakland, I’m spending the in-between days of March looking forward to May, when the Red Sox once again face Oakland in Oakland, and spring will be here for real.

 

Keep on truckin’

In another sign of spring’s imminent arrival, tonight I went to the post office around 7:00, and it was still light out. Of course, this is a direct result of this weekend’s time change: an artificial more than natural way to spring forward. But considering that during the dark days of November and December, it was dark when I left home to teach classes at 8:00am and dark when I returned from campus at 6:00pm, seeing the sun past dinner time is a milestone only other New Englanders like Theriomorph and Leslee can fully appreciate.

Now that it’s March, we take our signs of spring whenever and however we can find them. According to the academic calendar, this so-called “Spring Semester” began in January, when things here in New England were anything but springy. And yet now that the semester has reached its halfway point, I arrived back in Keene this afternoon to find my driveway mostly free from the ice and hard-packed snow that has covered it for the past month or so, after several snowfalls and day-long doses of wintry mix had left it treacherously (and seemingly perpetually) slick.

It will be weeks (if not a month or more) before I see my yard again, as it’s still covered with a foot or so of snow, and the nights in New Hampshire are still freezing and sometimes snowy. But next week is Spring Break at Keene State, and this year the timing seems apt. We’re not yet out of the winter woods–we’ll probably see at least one more snowstorm before spring arrives For Real–but we’ve definitely turned a corner toward Almost Over. When you know spring is lurking not too long in the distant future, it’s that much easier to keep on truckin’ through the remaining days between “in like a lion” and “out like a lamb.”

Don’t be fooled: I shot today’s pictures in Newton, where the ground is bare and things like frost-blasted grass and weather-worn planters have emerged from the snow cover. Who knows what I’ll find in my yard here in Keene once the spring thaw that’s already happened in the Boston suburbs makes its way up to southwest New Hampshire.

 

Spring forward

Here’s a telling gauge of how Massachusetts compares to New Hampshire in terms of seasonal progress. Whereas I traditionally see the first snowdrops in Keene in late March, I spotted Newton’s first snowdrops on March 3rd this year, about three weeks before they’ll bloom in New Hampshire. While Newton and other Boston suburbs have already changed their clocks to Spring Standard Time, Keene and the rest of southwest New Hampshire are still on Snowfall Saving Time.

 

Surreal

It seems I’ve been thinking about upside-down tree reflections ever since Leslee blogged one recently. Or maybe I still have this picture of Waban’s festive holiday tree reflected in snow-melt still in mind. Or maybe I can blame the “Search” box at the bottom of my blog side-bar, for when I typed in “surreal,” this post was at the top of the search results.

Whatever the reason, the above picture of pine trees reflected in the half-frozen surface of Goose Pond in December, 2006 is what I’m posting for today’s Photo Friday theme, Surreal. It’s always odd to see an inverse version of ordinary objects, a simple pond or puddle de-familiarizing the same old sights. In December of 2006, Goose Pond was on the edge of a several-month deep freeze; now in March of 2008, New England is coming out of all that. Yesterday in Keene, a noontime walk revealed the family of snow-folk I’d blogged last week is now giving up the snow-ghost. Eaves were dripping snow-melt, and sidewalks that had never been shoveled were topped with a slushy soup of thawing ice and hard-packed snow.

The fact that last week’s snow is quickly melting is in no way surreal: snow falls and subsequently melts every year in New England. What’s surreal is the climatic (and often climactic) contrast I’ve experienced in my weekly “commute” between Keene and Newton. Yesterday in Keene the weather was mild and sunny, joggers ran in shorts, sidewalks were often impassable with slippery slush and shoe-topping puddles of snow-melt, and several feet of snow remained in yards and other shaded, un-shoveled spots. Today in Newton, there’s virtually no snow anywhere: the last of it melted yesterday, revealing grass, last year’s remaining leaves, and mud, mud, mud. Simply by driving the 80-some miles from southwest New Hampshire to the suburbs of Boston, it seems I’ve entered an entirely different climate, one where I can wear shoes rather than boots and can stroll down a sidewalk without watching my slippery step.

This time of year in Keene, you see, you don’t have to head to Goose Pond to take in the surreal sight of something reflected upside down in water. All you have to do is look at the sidewalk in front of you when you try to ford your way across Main Street.

 

Chill out!

This is the best image I have of the enormous campus snowman I’d mentioned in my last post. In addition to sporting sunglasses, scarf, and sombrero, this snowman is two-faced, sporting an expression on either side. The one above looks emotionally enigmatic, probably because of the aforementioned sunglasses and the frown-like remnants of what looks to be a drooping mustache. The one below looks more unambiguously happy, with a silly grin that speaks toward the contents of that red plastic cup.

Both Massachusetts and New Hampshire are supposed to get more snow tonight: it seems I can run from the wintry weather, but just I can’t hide. If you want to take a virtual trip to a far different climate, click over to From the Far Field, the blog of one of my Keene State teaching colleagues who’s spending a six month sabbatical in Pune, India. And if the long winter months make you feel old in your bones, check out Middle Ages, the blog of an anonymous friend who woke up one morning, found herself middle aged, and wondered aloud how that happened. Enjoy, and don’t forget to Chill Out regardless of what climate or age you find yourself in.

 

Stopping by woods

Whose woods are these? I just don’t know. The “Private” sign keeps out no snow. Apologies to Robert Frost, but this morning I couldn’t help stopping by woods after last night’s snowy evening.

The storm that rained on Boston last night dropped some seven inches of snow here in Keene. The streets and sidewalks that had been impassably icy from last week’s wintry mix were snowy rather than slippery this morning, plow crews having worked through the night to make sure the morning commute (and my morning dog-walk) happened with minimal inconvenience. Snow is much easier than ice to walk on, and this morning’s snow was sticky rather than powdery, so it afforded good traction.

By this point in the winter, we should be sick of snow: earlier in the week, I was certainly sick of ice. But today, I noticed a friendly and even bemused attitude in the faces of passersby I met while walking Reggie downtown and back. “Do you think this will be the last one,” I asked one man shoveling his driveway. “Nope, there’ll be one more,” he answered. By this point in the season, New Englanders have grown resigned to and even perversely fond of interminable winters: if we’ve made it this far, we surely can make it another month, two, or three until the snow stops and the black-flies hatch.

On campus today, I spotted an enormous snowman with sunglasses, scarf, and sombrero gripping a red plastic cup: apparently he (like many students) has gone to Margaritaville in his mind. Elsewhere, an entire family of snow folk stood lined larger than life in someone’s yard: a productive use, it seems, of an ample resource. When snowstorms show no sign of stopping–we’re supposed to get several more inches tonight and tomorrow, and potentially another Big Dump on Friday–you might as well hunker down, make yourself some snow-friends, and pour something tasty and appropriately alcoholic in your own red plastic cup. The snow’s not going much of anywhere, so visiting an imagined Margaritaville is the next best alternative.

Click here for a photo-set of yet more snow photos…and don’t forget to bring your own beverage in a red plastic cup.

 

Dawn to dusk

On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I teach at 8:00, so instead of letting Reggie out to sniff the accumulated piles of snow in my yard and driveway, I take him for a quick walk: around the block and back, far enough for Reggie to sniff and pee and for me to snap a few pictures before coming back to prepare for class. This morning, the eastern horizon was capped with pink, trout-speckled clouds: sunrise.

On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, I get home from teaching around 4:00, so instead of letting Reggie out to sniff the accumulated piles of snow in my yard and driveway, I take him for a somewhat longer walk: to downtown and back, far enough for more sniffing, peeing, and photo-snapping. This afternoon, the sky opened to release a confetti-drop of quickly accumulating white: snowfall.

As I type this, I’m tucked inside for the night and the sky is spitting a sizzle of wintry mix on my window panes: the last I checked, my car was nestled in four to six inches of new, wet snow. Tomorrow morning, after Reggie and I get back from our Wednesday morning walk downtown and back, I’ll dig out my car while Reggie sniffs the newly accumulated snow piles, then I’ll spend the day doing grading, laundry, and teaching prep: another February dawn-to-dusk in New England.