May first in Montana; May Day.
Spring, or so the calendar has said since late March.
But we know better here.
Now is not the time to hang the snow shovel in the garage
Or trade studded tires for summer ones
Or put the blankets in their cedar chest.
Much of the world may have burst into fulsome blooms, expansive lilacs and forsythia; ranks of tulips and red bud.
Here I’m just thankful for the midnight sprite who took yesterday’s sprinkle and painted the drab grass a timid shade of green.
For the lonely bunch of daffodils at the foot of a neighbor’s mail box.
For the brave and buoyant meadowlark at the edge of town, singing.
For the skittish buds on the mountain ash. Today? Too soon? Too late, they ask.
We have robins now, but they’ve been forewarned that the weather bureau still shows snow in the coming week;
Which—on our best days, when the sky is clear and the wind calm—will allow the Forest Service to fire up one more controlled burn and bathe the valley in smoke.
As the calendar also says, our days begin early and I treasure the glow of our indigo bedtime sky.
But this long light is bittersweet. It’s the speeding march of our distant sun to its brightest, longest passage above us.
That will end just as our summer begins.
When we must accustom ourselves to the interminable journey of disappearing incandescence.
This is the sly season. The tricky season—at once both what we crave and what we crave too much. What we clutch tight-fisted lest it slides back into winter. Or lest it romps to its end before we’ve even enjoyed the idea.
And, in the polite conversation of check-out stands and neighborly calls, we speculate on summer—and whether there will be one. Or whether, once more, the mountains we love, the huge sky that shelters us will disappear again into the smoke of our troubled, tropical planet. ©
