One of my favorite expressions is that seasons are over-rated.
It's not that I don't like variation, especially within a 24-hour cycle. I rather liked summers on the Eastern slope of Colorado where I grew up. You could have warm, blue-sky mornings with a breeze building from the direction of Gulf of Mexico, noontimes brooding with thunderheads over the mountains to the west, afternoon deliverance of a brief and warm and heavy downpours and then clearings to star-lit skies in the evening. Those days were perfect. Find me a location where I can enjoy Colorado summers for 365 days a year. That's the year-round season I'll condo-buy into. At least, that's the way I remember it.
Only problem - one of the problems - with Colorado was that the summers were always too short, crowded out by those less ideal, below average, sub-par other seasons.
Even now, that I live in Sozadee, I'm still somewhat afflicted by changing seasons. Of course, they're much more tolerable than the bad ol' days were back in the land of ice and snow. But there is room for improvement.I actually think seasons should be delineated on the calendar differently. I'm not sure my more conservative, tradition-bound readers will follow this, but I'll try.
It's more logical and symmetrical to consider December 21st, Solstice, as the dead of winter. It's the shortest day. So, assuming we're doomed to divide the year up into four seasons, I think it's logical to set the onset of Winter 45 days before December 21st, or November 5th.
That means 45 days after the Solstice, on February 4th, winter breaks up into spring. And, 90 days later, on the Cinco de Mayo (to fudge a little), spring turns into summer. That makes the longest day of the year, June 21st, occur where it should, in the sweet-spot center of summer. Autumn falls 45 days later on August 6th, whence it runs until it trips and stumbles into a winter face-plant on November 4th.I could budge and fudge a couple of days back or forward, but this seems to make more sense than what we have now. Now, we have winter start with the most odious, ugliest, shortest, and coldest day of the year. That day should be jammed into the heart of the heartless season, it seems to me, into the middle of fucking winter.
Where does this put us? Here in Sozadee, on the 24th of March, we are in the middle of a glorious spring. Cat Ballou (A.K.A., Blue & Balloustic Missile) is up to her teats in the tall grass where her pursuing German Shepherds and Pit Bulls dare not venture.She doesn't know it, yet, but with the advent of daylight savings time, her Frisbee training is about to begin. Following that, perhaps even before the advent of summer on Cinco de Mayo (remember?), her swimming and body-surfing lessons will begin on Saturdays. By the end of this summer (her second with me) and the beginning of autumn (August!), she will be counted on to beat all lurking Labradors to her floating tennis balls. Next summer I'll be able to risk Frisbees in the surf.
So that's the way it is, here in Sozadee: where all of the dogs - Dobies anyways - are above average and seasons are neither observed nor respected.
I can really relate with the Colorado winter thing. Having grown up in South Carolina by the time I was twenty-two I had seen real snow maybe three times. And what I mean about real snow I talking about seeing more than just a light dusting from the odd and rare convergence of cold temperatures and rain. But in Colorado but the middle of my first winter there I had already had enough of that white hell and was ready to go home. Sadly because of Uncle Sammy I had four more winter to endure.
ReplyDeleteBut during the summers I loved to hike along the trails outside Colorado Springs on the trail of the ever elusive Bigfoot and his buddy Elvis. I swear I saw both really early one morning just outside a Denny's at the base of Pikes' Peak.
But then again at 4:00am in the morning when my little group woke up from drinking a little too much the night before going to any Denny's, IHOP, or Shoneys there was no tell who or what you could see.