Late blooming

According to Marmota monax, Seattle will next get some nice weather on, oh, about March 16.
--My Blog (2-2-09)

Hang a gold medal around that clever groundhog's neck, and treat him to extra helpings of berries and grubs. Yesterday and today showed the first true signs that Spring had arrived in Seattle -- blue skies and a bright sun whose rays warm the body, even through the cold air. Finally we draw to the end of a peculiar winter season, one whose outset was marked by an abnormally heavy and prolonged blanket of snow before Christmas, and that ended with nightly snowfalls still dusting the ground several days last week.

Local flora has been irritated and confused. Ornamental fruit trees that often show their first signs of flowering by late January are only now beginning to burst into clouds of pink and white. Crocuses and primroses are displaying their colors, many weeks past their accustomed season. Trees that have often emerged from bud by now stand stark and gray, seemingly unaware that the equinox is at hand. Only college kids (and their younger high school siblings) order their lives by the calendar, rather than by the temperature of the air. It's March, and the students have been out in shorts --even t-shirts -- pretending they'd been admitted to UCLA rather than the UW.

So, yes, the groundhog did us all in this year. But fortunately -- in the long run -- it makes no difference. No matter how long the wait, the trees will always bud, the flowers will always bloom, the grass will always begin growing and demand the services of a lawnmower. In another month, maybe two, no clue will remain that we had to wait an additional six weeks for Spring, all because of the heliophobia of an overgrown rodent.

I walked across a crowded campus today, where spring quarter finals are now creeping up on weary-eyed UW students. Some of these anxiety-ridden young people arrived as freshman knowing exactly what they wanted to do with their lives, and the courses they needed to get there. In four years, they'll be looking for jobs as engineers or foresters or architects, or polishing their applications to graduate or professional schools. Others, equally anxious, equally bright, arrived confused and bewildered, having no idea how they wanted to spend their lives, knowing only that they wanted a degree. Some of these latter will find themselves still undecided, even after they've complete their majors and obtained their degrees.

Sometimes the groundhog decrees an early Spring -- other times he squints at the sun and decides he needs to sleep on it for another six weeks. But, in either case, Spring finally arrives, and by May or June, no one remembers or cares whether the leaves came out early or late.

So the silent advice I offered in passing to those students whose stride across campus may have seemed a bit less confident and purposeful than that of some of their peers, was this: Don't worry, it's all going to work out. Now and then, the buds take a little longer to open, but sometimes the most spectacular floral displays are those that took the longest to bloom. Trust in yourselves. Trust in life.