Wednesday, February 8, 2012

When what you want is wrong

I walked the golf course today with the dog in the sunshine and thought long and hard about the unseasonality of the weather this month -- heck, this "winter."

My very favourite seasons of the year are the shoulder seasons on either side of winter -- the quiet days of midNovember, and even more so the strengthening clear light of March. The problem is that these have come far too soon -- or too late. I'm of mixed minds how to go through them: do I exult in them or rue them? A scientist friend shook his head the other day and forecast tropical diseases and bugs within a couple of these sorts of winters. It's kind of like the tree line advancing steadily northward into what was so recently tundra.

I said to other friends this week that one of the reasons I like early spring so much is that it's a kind of reprieve -- a yahoo, we made it feeling. I said maybe it was the Protestant in me, needing to earn my salvation. But this, this is far too easy and far too difficult. It's what I want but it's wrong.

No one has called me crazy yet for riding my bike all winter, and there are lots of us out there, riding bare roads. I saw a guy in shorts today. He had red legs but still. My cousin spotted a flock of robins near Guelph. I saw a bug on the golf course the other day. I'm afraid for the maples, that the sap will flow too soon.

My son planned to earn his volunteer hours this winter by flooding the school rink weekly. So far the rink was skate-able for two whole days. We've skied once.

I wonder what my puppy thinks, in this first and formative year of his life: he's figured out a lot of how his world works, and I'm sure he sees snow as a strange, occasional and arbitrary thing instead of the constant it usually is. It's what I want but it's wrong.

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