Spring Fling
I’ve been giving the side eye to the snow which has kept it away from upstate New York for the most part (other regions, sorry — my powers only extend so far). But I suspect that spring will be coming up just around the corner. In Scotland we’ve already got the crocuses and snowdrops popping up.
I think spring will hit the northeast with a bang.
Spring is a fever. Especially in the north. I lived in the south for some years and while it has its own seasons, they’re subtle (in Houston it was oh god, I’m dying from the heat and the humidity changing to oh god, I can breathe but it’s still too hot).
When winter means snow and lots of it (this year particularly so) as well as really cold temperatures, spring isn’t just a point on the calendar — it’s a reason to celebrate. You hunger for sun and warmth mentally and physically. I remember Michigan State Students in shorts on lawn chairs in the snow the moment it became sunny enough to try to work up a tan for spring break. Crazy, but why do you think it’s March Madness that made the hare go nuts?
That’s the real madness: love (or at least sex) is in the air.
We think we’re so sophisticated and civilized but it’s always been the same: we’re guided by the promptings of nature. Chaucer knew this back in the day. His famous opening lines to The Canterbury Tales demonstrates this spring fever:
WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages…
Chaucer knew what he was on about: April’s warm rain, March’s thirst for warmth, the plants springing up, the restless winds, the longer days, the cacophony of birds so excited by spring that they sleep all night with one eye open — and people just the same, getting restless and finding any pretext to abandon routine and meet new people.
How’s your spring fever coming along?
Don’t forget to follow Lady Smut — our pilgrimage explores all kinds of new territory.
