(HOST) Commentator Madeleine Kunin is a former governor of Vermont, and today she’s celebrating the return of Spring.
(KUNIN) When spring arrives in Vermont, we feel we’ve earned it. The balmy season is a special reward for those who weathered one of the longest and hardests winters many of us can recall.
Every patch of stubborn snow has not yet yielded to the sun’s warming rays. Some swatches cling to the high altitudes, and here and there a dirt crusted mound is piled up against the shady side of a house, as if for protection.
It’s easy to see where the sun has hit and where it has not, creating a pattern on the ground of fresh green growth interspersed with dry gray grass. What a difference light and warmth can make, leaving some parts dormant and others wide awake.
For a while it seemed as if Spring would never arrive this year. Winter was enjoying herself so thoroughly that she did not seem to want to leave. We were reminded of the season’s power well into April, as it dropped its last signatures with sudden snow squawls and unfriendly sleet, making driving a challenge we were no longer prepared to meet. We had begun to lose our tolerance for unpredictable and unseasonable weather at the end of March, expecting a reprieve from boots, lost woolen hats, and mittens that had begun to lose their shape. Searching for the ice scraper on the floor of the car seemed like an unfair imposition.
With the arrival of the first spring days, all of winter’s unrelenting demands are forgotten and forgiven. A kind of soothing amnesia sets in as we drink in the warm air with animal thirst, breathing in and out deeply, wanting to fill every distant body cell with scented oxygen. How quickly we forget the bite of the cold numbing our fingers, the careful baby steps we had to take on the ice to avoid a fall. Instead of looking down with a cautious eye, we can almost skip down the sidewalk and look up at the generous blue sky and feel the delicious warmth of the sun on our hands and faces, turned up like flowers.
Yes, spring was worth waiting for. Forgive me for not believing in spring during those long dark days when the sun set way before dinner. I am grateful for its return, for its gift of light and warmth and new growth.
When the news of the day is dark in many parts of the world, Spring once again provides the renewal we have been waiting for.