There is a phenomenon called The Green Flash. This is a mysterious event that happens just at the moment when the top of the solar disk just touches the horizon at either dawn or dusk. It can only be seen in very flat topography – an ocean will do. To see it you need to be looking at the exact moment of sunup or sundown, so you will need to be up and attentive and staring at the horizon as the sky slowly turns from black to grey and then a red smear will appear and widen and start creeping up the sky and then there is orange and yellow – keep looking – and it becomes brighter as your eyes become dry and gritty and then you blink and you've missed it. Or you could try it from the other end of the day when you drift to the rail, margarita in hand, and watch as the sun slowly lowers itself into the sea. In this case by the time you get to the green flash stage you will be blind from staring into the sun all that time and will also miss it, but at least you will have that margarita.
Spring is like that. You really have to pay attention or you will miss it.
As winter grinds on and the boots accumulate in the entryway and the pockets of your warmest coat begin to bulge with chapsticks and cough drops and wadded-up Kleenexes and unmatched mittens and you are driving into town in late January barely able to see over the top of your wooly scarf, you may notice a tree whose buds seem larger, more optimistic than they were last time you drove by. It's easy to convince yourself of this. Then in February maybe you'll see some ducks on the rare patch of open water on the river that weren't there last week. And before you know it, the open water place loses its ice cover entirely and it doesn't grow back. Then there is an occasional open patch on a wind-scoured field. And then the cardinals are singing and the tiny birds are squabbling and your car starts without that mournful growl you have grown used to. Then there is a fly on the kitchen window, a larder beetle in the sink and one lone mosquito which you immediately crush. Coons start enjoying your bird feeder. The ducks are humping like minks and the geese are eying one another affectionately. All the dirt roads are nearly impassable owing to potholes whose breadth and depth are sufficient to swallow a small car if not a school bus.
But you keep watching while the buds really do fatten up, and the willows become yellow and the mud grows deep and glutinous before it finally drains and solidifies into deep ruts inviting the passer-by to take a graceless pratfall.
Then one glorious day you open the back door and a cloud of goldfinches scatter. You step out in your shirtsleeves and take a long breath of that intoxicating heavy, sweet, green smell that signals the arrival of spring. You walk out among the flower beds, hyperventilating as you go, looking for signs of life and are not disappointed. Even the weeds are beautiful in spring. The brave little crocuses are up. Something you planted last year is showing signs of life although you can't actually remember what it is. You take a long, happy lungfull of that heady spring smell before going off to the shed to find all your trowels and rakes and wagons and shovels.
So there you are for three or four days purging last year's detritus and spreading mulch, smiling at the bulbs that have made a flower for you, saying kind things to the lilacs that are busy making tiny leaves and pausing often to enjoy the warm sun on your back, listen to the cheerful prattle of all the little birds in the woods trying to lead the ladies astray. You feel so benevolent even the chipmunks are cute.
You dig a little flower bed thinking “Delphiniums here.” You get the vegetable garden more or less ready, weed the perennials, spread mulch hither and yon. “An amur maple there, an Alberta spruce up there. A bank of zinnias by the patio. Another peony near the trellis.” Ambitious plans for massive modifications.
Then one day it rains. A nice warm rain but wet all the same, so no digging. Actually a welcome interlude allowing aching muscles to recover. Then next day it's still wet so you spend the day planning where to put another bed and where to put the cucumbers this year.
Then the next day it is 27º and humid. The mosquitos are out and the coons have inexplicably dug a large hole in the garden. The chipmunks have been ferreting around in the perennial bed and a good third of the seedlings have damped off.
Spring is over.
This is not to say that summer lacks appeal. Who doesn't like to kick back on the plastic furniture engaging in idle gossip and soaking up lemonade before ambling down to the water for another paddle up the river, down the river, and back to the lemonade. Or watching those hardy plants that survived their infancy turn into whatever they're supposed to be. Summer is good but it lacks the ecstasy of those few sublime dream days that connect the poles of our year. So transcendent and so brief.
Like the green flash.