Faux spring

Today is January 14.  Just two weeks ago we celebrated New Year's Eve.  More than half of January's normally dreary month still lies before us, threatening the Northwest Corner with snow storms, constant rain, days both dark and short, and that sense of general malaise that sends those with time and money south to brighter climes for the duration.

And yet, for the past three or four days, we've enjoyed beautiful, sunny days.  Not warm -- in the 40s during the day, the 30s at night -- but sunny.  The shade's been chilly, but the sun's felt warm and comforting.  The sky, deep blue.  The snowy mountains have shone sharp and crisp, both to the west and to the east.  Mount Rainier looms to the south, its ridges and couloirs sharpened by long shadows, as the sun rides low on the horizon.

It's January, and yet pleasure boats  pass back and forth between Lake Washington and the Sound.  Not sailboats, not yet, but power boats with warm, cozy cabins.  As I cross the University campus, I see varied sartorial approaches to the winter sun.  Most students are dressed like me -- a parka, or at least a warm fleece jacket or hoody.  But many others wear shorts.  Some -- probably not California transplants -- even sport cotton t-shirts.

I suspect those wearing shorts or t-shirts of magical thinking.  "If I dress as though it were spring, spring shall appear."  And yet Mother Nature does indeed offer hints that -- January or no -- spring does indeed lie dead ahead.  My secret flowering tree, just outside the Mechanical Engineering Building, serves annually as my own, private Climatic Oracle -- it's the first bloom I sight each year, the harbinger of Spring.  Yep, a tiny bud bursting into flower foretells the future, to my eyes, with less ambiguity than any sooth telling at Delphi.

And on Monday, two days ago, incredibly early, its first bud burst into bloom.

And so, I can't help it.  Ground Hog Day still lies almost three weeks in the future, and yet my thoughts already lightly turn to thoughts of Spring.  If this be Global Warming (I rejoice), let Los Angeles or Miami suffer its ravages.  In Seattle, I for one welcome Spring in mid-January.

Recklessly joyful, I turn to the weather report.  Oh.  Rain tomorrow!  Rain through the weekend!  Temperatures in the forties, day and night. 

Silly me.  Should have known better.

Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.  Proverbs 37:1.