The coming of spring, the official coming, will arrive via the vernal equinox at 1:48am EDT on March 20...tomorrow...or rather, tonight, a little after midnight.
Spring and all that it means...has meant...and for some out there will mean for the first time in their lives has started again.
Henry David Thoreau, in “Walden,” describes the coming of spring through the stages of the disappearance of ice on the ponds and rivers around his home. He writes “When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery.” He continues to discuss the finer points of thawing and temperatures and the rise in the day and the fall after dark. All in all, it is a transition period characterized with force and bending and breaking of the Earth, in many ways, freeing itself from a deep, cold sleep.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, in “Cross Creek,” writes of spring in Florida, at first saying “Here in Florida the seasons move in and out like nuns in soft clothing, making no rustle in their passing,” but adds “At the Creek, spring is as definite and as exciting as in Greenland. We have not had snow behind us, but we have had an ungrowing period, as have they, and life now stirs and sap rises and creatures mate and the snakes come out of their winter lethargy.”
The two, writing 90 years and a thousand miles apart, both recognized the transition and the shifting of light and time that comes with spring.
For weeks now all over the island the season has been coming with all the slow ease Rawlings witessed. Citrus blossoms bloom and tender oak leaves stretch out unhurriedly through the canopy. Spiderworts stand straight each morning, greeting the Redbuds, Azaleas and the bright red of the Red Maple all who have had their bloom. In a few weeks Raintrees will exert their paced growth and fill their limbs with bunches of leaves where today there are only scattered and tiny tender pink branches.
Winter’s pause and hibernation has given way to buds and birth and renewal and growth.
Spring hath arrived without haste.