Spring finally has sprung, or has it?
A robin kicks up snow while foraging after a spring snow blanketed Blacksburg, Virginia, March 12. Credit: AP/Matt Gentry
Spring is upon us.
We think.
If you are like many of your fellow humans, you've been waiting for it, thinking about it, looking for it. And if you are like most of your fellow humans, there is something you're looking for to let you know it's here.
The first robin. A crocus poking up through the ground. An emerging glint of yellow from a forsythia stand or the bright yellow flash of a goldfinch.
The crack of a Florida bat on your TV. A bear out of hibernation and rummaging through a backyard in New Jersey. The cherry blossoms in our nation's capital. St. Patrick's Day anywhere.
They're all signs. And they're all inconsistent. It turns out they don't signal anything with any surety, for only winter decides when spring arrives.
The uncertainty of when spring really begins mirrors the uncertainty of March itself. It is the most mercurial of months, offering the hope and expectation of an emergence from winter while stubbornly refusing to show it the door. I'm not sure it's any kind of exaggeration to say I've seen more cases of March going out like a lion than a lamb.
In a former life, when I covered college basketball for this newspaper, I would dive headfirst into postseason madness beginning with conference tournaments when it was still indisputably winter, and then fly jauntily home from the Final Four with spring in clear bloom.
Then and now, there rarely is a definitive moment of transition, where we can say that yesterday was winter and today is spring.
Astronomy and calendars tell us the first day of spring is Monday, the day of the vernal equinox. It's an interesting word, equinox. It comes from a pair of Latin words meaning "equal night."
That's because the equinox is the moment when the sun crosses the equator and everyone everywhere all at once experiences a day and night of equal lengths. It comes twice a year and for most of us, I suspect, spring is ascendant since the daylight only gets longer from here.
That's our supposedly specific definition of spring. But it's just as capricious as any other marker. It's a little flag on a meteorological roller coaster that we might not even notice if it comes while we're on one of the drops.
And yet we look. It's part of our lot as humans. We're always looking for signs of what we want to happen, of what we expect to happen, and not just with the weather. We see something and if there's room to interpret and extrapolate, we do it in a way that meets our expectations and conceptions of the world. We love to read the tea leaves in our favor.
Is a 2-for-4 day by a veteran baseball player a sign that he's back on his game and rounding into form or a blip on the steady downward spiral of aging?
Is a politician changing their point of view a sign of a better understanding of a tough issue or a sign of a temporary deferral until after the next election?
Is a momentous court decision a sign of a rupture in the fabric of our republic or a sign that we're sewing it back together?
Is a protest march through the streets a sign of people exercising their constitutional rights and seeking a more perfect union or a sign that our society is fraying and under siege and a call to action to protect it?
Whether we're optimistic or pessimistic about where the economy is heading, we can find ample signs lurking in the steady stream of statistics to support our position.
We believe what we choose to believe, and look for confirmation. As spring has sprung. Or not.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
