Spring is more than sales on winter gear en route to the clearance bin or the emergence of chocolate eggs and Easter bunnies in store windows. It’s the sunset of winter, the dawn of warmth and a period of transition.
Just like a child playing hide-and-go-seek, the transition from winter to spring happens if you are ready or not. You can be slightly in denial as you ski over bare rocks and tree roots, desperately hoping for one more tour across the cross-country trails.
Or, you can be so fed up with winter you’ve been staring at the thermometer, just hoping your mental power alone could make the needle rise above zero. However, spring still strolls in at her own leisure with teasing glimpses of the sun throughout the darkest months.
Like most transitions, the arrival of spring is not for the meek and mild. Spring comes with mud, ice and impossible weather predictions. You take an unholy amount of layers when venturing outside, because you can’t decide if you’re hot or cold. You’ll lay your new shoes on the altar of mud one day and sacrifice yourself to a slip on the ice the next because you didn’t wear winter boots. You’ll retire the car’s ice-scraper and brush to the garage the day winter makes a comeback. Then you can find yourself stuck carrying unused extra winter gear or stranded on a hike without sunscreen, during spring’s untimely response. It’s the game between the seasons, which humans will always lose.
Yet, despite the utter annoyance of this time of year, there’s a comfort. It’s the same comfort we have that the sun will rise each morning and spring will come each year, like the light at the end of winter’s dark tunnel.
It has been a long time since we have seen nature’s splendor but I’m sure the sky was just as blue, the grass was just as lush and the air was just as soft last summer, but we forgot. We took the outdoors for granted, letting Mother Nature’s beauty slip away as we carried on with our daily lives.
There’s something about spring that reopens our world to ourselves again. It’s like cracking open your favourite book for the millionth time or revisiting your favourite place in the world. You know exactly what it is, what it looks like but there’s an intangible excitement about it being unveiled to you yet again.
This phenomenon continues to spring unwrapping winter, there’s this inexplicable childish joy in seeing our earth again as if for the first time. Despite spring abundant annoyances, this excitement in seeing our Yukon once more is spring’s true identity.
