1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
The King James Version of the Bible, Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verses 1-8
Spring has come early to Humptulips County, and as much as I enjoy spring I wish it hadn’t done so; for spring is supposed to be a creature of late March, of all of April, and of early May – not February.
In normal years, February is the trickster month: first, it drowns us in a tincture of greyish perversity to suggest the strong likelihood that winter has permanently triumphed; then, just when we have come to believe that the sensual world may never rise again, it amuses itself by tantalizing us with timid snowdrops and bursts of crocus in order to add just a smidgen of doubt to our increasing conviction.
But not this year. Spring is already in the air and on the ground this February. Tree and bush are in bud, and have sent their initial clouds of pollen aloft. Forsythia are swelling with pride, nearly to the bursting point, while azaleas and rhododendrons proudly display the hardened nubs of incipient bloom. Migrating birds have returned early to the Farm in droves to rejoin their over-wintering cousins in filling the air with choruses of song. Their work of nest-building has begun deep within the sheltering pines; they are already celebrating the season of life-affirming renewal by putting the potholes in our gravel driveway to joyous use as bathing pools, while denigrating its impecunious youth by emptying our bird feeders every other day with an almost religious fervor.
Is this year simply a fluke? If not, what does this sea change mean for the month of April? What implications does it have for Chaucer? For Eliot? For mankind in general? I don’t know for certain; I only know that as much as I detest February’s pranks, I would gladly welcome them back if it meant a return to the usual rhythm of life as we have known it. Better the tired jokes and worn out tricks of a dull grey month, than the uncertain vagaries of the unknown and the unknowable.
