Spring Nowhere

Welp, I think spring is finally here. That's kind of a risky statement to make considering that we were fighting off some snow accumulation a little over a week ago, but nevertheless, I think spring is finally here. For the last few weeks I have not had to wear four layers of clothing. I wore three for a short while, but these days I'm down to two. Two layers of clothing sounds like a good place to be. There's still a chill in the air, but when mixed with a bit of sun it's completely pleasant. The nights don't even get that cold anymore. I feel comforted when I look at the 10-day forecast and see that a cold front only means dipping down to highs in the low 50s. It can't get too bad from this point on.

I've left my window and shades open for the last few days without even shutting them for the night. After nearly half a year of limiting my room's air circulation to the stuffy building's ventilation system, my room suddenly feels fresh and new. I even left my window open yesterday when it rained and the smell of fresh rain filled my room. I thought I was in a soapbar commercial. Then this morning I woke up to an ocean of Carribean-blue skies with a flew small, fluffy clouds sailing through. This intense blue sky only makes a short appearance here every year as it disappears behind thick gray clouds or dims under a distant, weak sun for a good chunk of the year. I saw the vibrant blue, and felt the warmth and for once since a long time, I woke up happy.

At the end of the day, as I descended down the hill to my dorm, the entire slope seemed alive again with an intense green of nearly neon quality. I also caught the scenic view across the valley and noticed that the deforested patches that appeared for the last few months like barren, icy snow mounds now transformed into fuzzy, green pastures.

So with the sun beaming much stronger, a few flowers starting to come out, and the grass intensely green it's starting to feel a little more alive. The vail of lifeless depression that settles on this place for a long stretch of the year has mostly lifted, but I'm not quite that fickle. For now the place still seems like a blooming graveyard. The vast stretches of forests that we can see from atop the hill still stand in brown-gray ghostliness, no leaves, no nothing, only to be interspered with a few tired evergreens.

This is the season I'd go for, though. The fall is pleasant, and the burst of gold, red, orange, and brown make it quite visually enticing, but all good things come to an end and the end of the fall is quite tragic here. It thursts us into very short, cloudy days, lots of freezing temps, and heaps of snow left to weather for months. I don't think the horror of winter needs to be described, beyond the hints I've dropped so far. And summer is an awful humid mess--like putting something pleasant on stereoids. The tree canopies become a bit overpowering and suffocating, rendering the illusion of living in a Northern jungle a bit too real. The summer heat is saturated with humidity and the downpowers can kill ants in their ferocity.

So this will be my last season in this wretched place, which isn't so bad, but is too full of bad experiences for me to get too sentimental about leaving it.