A Tale of Two Seasons (1 of 5)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was hot, it was cold, it was rainy, it way snowy, it was sunny, it was stormy. It was March.

Here in East Tennessee the month of March is the time when we dare to get our hopes up. It’s the month when the seagulls leave Cherokee Lake. It’s the month when the Daffodils typically bloom (although, Daffodils are a gullible breed who can be tricked into blooming just about any time after the New Year). The Serviceberry tree at the end of my driveway blooms a brilliant, delicate white. Many of us get our first, glorious sunburn in March, usually from doing yard work in a T shirt.

It’s also the month that we get the most snow, tornados reappear after their winter hibernation, and we get back to pulling weeds and cutting grass. March is the month when I try to sleep with our windows open about six inches so I can hear owls and mockingbirds at night and wrens in the morning, but then must get up in the middle of the night to close them because the heater has kicked on. I’m willing to endure numerous hardships to enjoy the great outdoors, but burning propane unnecessarily isn’t one of them. Yes, March is the time when we dare to get our hopes up, only to have them crushed by the tilt of the earth in relation to the sun, only to have them raised again the next day.

March is a fickle month, but not completely unpredictable. If it’s cold today, it will be warm in a couple of days. If it’s warm today, it will be cold soon. In that respect, March is as predictable as a pendulum. It’s two seasons shuffled into a single month.

March, acting like February

I’ve heard some folks say that they couldn’t live in New England or the Rockies because of January. There’s just too much snow and cold and ice in the middle of the winter. Their winters are too dang deep. Not me. As much as I love the coast of Maine and the mountains of Colorado, I couldn’t live there because of March. In those places, winter is just too dang long. In Tennessee, March is the month in which it becomes obvious that winter won’t last forever.

March, acting like April

Having lived a winter-deprived childhood in Florida, I don’t mind a deep winter with respectable amounts of snow and ice. I like walking around in my home with fuzzy slippers and a mug of hot chocolate. (Winter is the only time of year I wish I liked coffee.) I like watching the Robins form winter flocks as if they intended to migrate south, but then never quite getting around to leaving. Juncos and White-throated Sparrows make their brief, winter appearance under our bird feeder. I don’t even mind scraping the windshield in the morning.

But by March, it’s time to move on. I’m ready to keep the windows open all night. I’m ready to put my slippers away for another year. I’m sick and tired of scraping my windshield. In other words, I love winter… but only for a couple of months. By the middle of March, I’m over it, and thankfully, East Tennessee is pretty much over it, too. Yes, we’ll still get some ice, and maybe some snow, but by late March the back of my neck is peeling from too much sun, and it has become obvious that spring has returned to East Tennessee. In the Rockies, people are beginning to think that their memories of spring are merely hazy remnants of a previous life.

Of course, in March all those hardy souls in Maine and Colorado still have their snow tires and chains on, are still burning wood in the fireplace, and are walking around in fuzzy slippers and robes, trying not to descend into a screaming case of March Madness. As March grinds along, that beautiful blanket of snow starts feeling like quicksand, and a lot of folks probably trade their hot coffee for hard liquor because desperate times require desperate measures.

In one of Robert Frost’s poems, he scolds April for sometimes acting like March instead of May. If he had lived in the South instead of New England he would have shifted his time frame a month earlier. He’d have scolded March for sometimes acting like February. In New England they look forward to April; here, we look forward to March.

Ahh, March! It’s the best reason to live in the South. [To be continued.]