Where are you Spring?

It's 40 degrees and raining right now. I have stubbornly worn sandals for the past two week, urging Spring to come in glory, to no avail.

It's 40 degrees and a cold rain is falling on the evening of May 3rd.

I often tell people about the seasons in Anawalt, WV where I grew up. In my childhood, even though we were south of Richmond, Virginia, we were far enough up in the mountains that the seasons looked like this:

Winter didn't really begin until after Christmas and only lasted until the end of February. We had lots of snow but seldom had a 'snow day' since we were far enough south that the snow tended to fall and melt over and over for about two months.

Spring came with a vengeance in early March and lasted through April, May and June. Verdant doesn't begin to describe how the mountains were for those four months. It was abundance multiplied by abundance. Abundance squared.

July and August were summer--dry and hot because of the latitude--but short because of being at 1800 feet or so above sea level. The altitude brought autumn in early September--and like spring--it lasted around 4 months...well into December because of how far south we were. It almost never snowed before Christmas.

Now, for my money, that 2/4/2/4 ratio of winter/spring/summer/fall is about as perfect as you could desire. All the seasons, but in a more pleasing balance.

Too bad that to live in Anawalt would be to live in an area where run-off from strip mines and mountain top mining has damaged the water, where the average age is the highest in any US county and the age of death is lowest, where 100,000 people lived when I was a child and now 27,000 live, where your kids ride an hour on a bus to high school and Oxycontin addition is higher than almost anywhere.

What a waste of a wondrous and gentle temperate climate....

Right now--on May 3--it is raining and 40 degrees in Cheshire....In a couple of weeks, I predict, it will be 85 and we'll all be complaining about the heat the same way we've been complaining about the cold since November. Connecticut is the Land of No Spring--straight from sleet to blistering heat most of the time.....Fall is nice here though. One out of 4 doesn't seem quite fair, though....