Naturalist springtime

You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
- Robert Frost

A few autumns ago a friend arrived from China, and she was pretty
nervous about the Maine winter. How deep will the snow get? she
wanted to know. And how much lower will the temperature go than it
does in Shanghai, where it is famously too hot in summer and too cold
in winter?
Before I could answer, she said with classic Chinese cheerfulness that
someone had told her "spring in Maine is very beautiful."
I thought long and hard before I replied to this. I did not know who
could have said it, or why. Whether spring even exists in Maine has
been debated at least since my ancestors arrived in Boothbay three
centuries ago. In human time, deep winter lasts approximately three to
four decades each year, and then March and April set in. They're
warmer months than February, but think about it: The bitterest three
days of last winter occurred in March, and northeast of Lewiston it
almost always snows in April. Certainly there is a sense of relief when
the daytime temperature stops sliding below 20. And when snowbanks
start receding there is a great sense of hope that a mythic moment
known in legend as "summer" actually might exist. But relief and hope
do not by themselves imply "spring," let alone "beauty."
It's true that on May 2 (in Troy at least) dandelions suddenly pop up
and authentically warm sunshine can appear. So my friend's informant
might have been referring to a week or two that includes the
blossoming of lilacs. But I've sat in Little League bleachers around
Memorial Day shivering in a Shanghai-bought winter jacket, and
slapping black flies. After that, summer hits almost exactly June 1.
I've seen true spring - in Shanghai, Athens, and in England where mild
days and flowers burgeon as early as February - and it definitely is not
happening here anytime soon. March, it has been observed, was devised
in Maine so people who don't drink will know what a hangover is like.
Our driveway, for example, is a rumpled sheet of tundra ice by night,
and a mud slick by day. If any more rain or slush falls in the next few
weeks, it will revert to an arroyolike state we helplessly name "A River
Runs Through It." Meanwhile, spots of sludge are drying on the slate
floor in the kitchen. Piles of rotting bird seed are appearing on the
porch under the feeders. Black ice flares on Route 9 most nights. Holes
have opened in previously smooth pavement. Deciduous trees remain
skeletons. Pantlegs are spattered and stained. Gray mist euphemistically
called "fog" swells out of melting snowfields like netherworld smokes.
My Shanghai coat breaks the wind by day but I freeze in it at night. The
NOAA says Maine's mean temperature for this month is just under 27
degrees. And by the way, the first day of spring was last week. Overall,
I need a drink.
I did not say any of this to my friend. I just let her keep believing in
spring. Like the rest of us.