Some would say that’s an oxymoron. I know my wife would.
In the wake of the latest snowfall (!), I’m almost inclined to agree with her. But when she remembers springtime in Maryland, she forgets the cold, wet, muddy parts, and the snow on the daffodils. April, I tell her, is April, unless you’re in Texas.
The spring we got together years ago was a storybook extra-warm one, with everything blooming at once, no “back door cold fronts” or rain for a week — probably was the best season of our entire lives so far, weather- and love-wise. But she does have a point: I’ve been here in Taos for 10 years, and in that time there’s never been a spring like the good ones we had back East, those extended days of surprising warmth, sweetness, and exploding life that excite you into a frenzy. No, not here. It’s exciting in its own way — I remember when the wind flattened the landlady’s tool shed in San Cristobal — but not exactly like that.
I also remember, however, that those delicious days inevitably led to summer in the Land of Pleasant Living. We used to live near Betterton in Kent County, and we did have tons o’ fun by the Chesapeake, especially when I gave in and did like everybody else — go slow, don’t fight it, eat crabs and sweet corn, drink beer, put your butt in the water, etc. — but I hated the humidity that felt like molten wax against my skin. My body loves the cool dryness of the Southwest, feels right at home, whereas my wife’s English genes have her fingertips cracking like crazy. During a Maryland summer, the slightest exertion would drench me in sweat. I’m sure my wife was hot too, but at least her fingers didn’t bleed when she played the piano.
Meanwhile back in Taos, yes, it snowed today. Came straight down in huge wet flakes like God spilled his Wheaties, and the next thing I knew, I’d ordered another load of firewood. I’d been putting that off, thinking I could muddle through with just an evening and a morning fire, stealing the last of the dead landlord’s aspen stash and scouring the yard for fallen branches. You know, idiot stuff. But I shuffled up to the road, slipping in the mud, gazed out at clouds and snow and rain as far as the eye could see (70-90 miles in decent weather, actually), and decided to email my wood guy. Hey, there’s progress! One of my previous wood suppliers worked part-time guiding elk hunters in the high country, and I never could reach him, so I’d telephone his wife to leave a message. The phone was in the kitchen, where they kept the parrot. That’s right, a freaking parrot: “Hi! This is John Farr, and — SQUAWWWWK!”
So believe me, being able to email the wood man is wonderful. Even more so is actually having the wood, because he cuts the piñon from the top of his own mountain and only takes standing dead trees killed by lightning. Those trees have the most crystallized pitch, something he learned from the Indians. You have to see this stuff burn to believe it: I never use paper or kindling, just touch a match to a chunk and pile more over it. And we pretty much always have to have firewood: the April snow will turn to howling demonic southwest winds until about June, which will usher in a week of weather that qualifies as “hot” if you’re chained naked in the sun, and then it will rain or rumble every afternoon the rest of the summer and be too cold to sit outside for a five o’clock drink, after which we get a week of fall and then winter again. (“Oh, but it’s a dry cold.”)
Hey, at least that simplies things!
[BTW, if you want to read a harrowing true weather tale from May 2 of last year, you owe it to yourselves to check this out: duststorms AND a blizzard on the way to Nebraska...]
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if you want mellower weather, then start listening to me when i keep trying to talk you into coming out here to the SF area