It's Spring! It's Spring!

a puddle on my driveway

I remember a picture book from my childhood - It's Spring!  It's Spring!  I'm sure it's out of print now.  But I recall that it expressed the joy you feel when the last frost is past, and plants and animals begin to show new life after a long winter. We're finally seeing green on the ground, and the squirrels have become more abundant in our yard. I'm itching to trim the grasses, but know I should wait for sign of new growth. I'm keeping my eye out for the crocuses, even though the ground is still too cold.  But it is Spring, and daytime temperatures in Rochester are, I hope, finally going to stop dipping below freezing.  And today, for the first time in months, it rained.  No, it poured!  And when the sun came out, the air felt crisp and some of the grit and dirty snow had been washed away.

This has been a long, cold winter - the first I've really experienced in Rochester.  And although I've done a bit griping, I count myself lucky for so many reasons.  Over the past five months, while Rochester has successfully dealt with its snow (although there seem to be more potholes than usual...), other parts of our country have seen flooding, drought, forest fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, sinkholes, and mudslides. None of these is a serious worry for our geographical area, thankfully.  For now.

In fact, as I recently learned, from a talk by Jim Howe of the Nature Conservancy, not only are we not at risk of running out of clean fresh water (as long as fracking remains elsewhere...for a good scare, watch the documentary Gasland), we are situated beside lakes that contain over 20% of the world's supply of surface fresh water, and almost 85% of North America's!  The states and provinces that border the Great Lakes have prudently joined to protect this water, and make sure it isn't siphoned off to Arizona or California (although there is a giant loophole for beer, soda, and bottled water companies).

Of course, luck only has a little to do with it.  We have chosen to live in a part of the country that is not prone to natural disasters.  Why other people choose to live in areas where they are so at risk mystifies me (and maddens me, that they are allowed to build, or rebuild in these areas, and drain public coffers when the inevitable happens).  I just hope that the politicians in New York continue to be good stewards of our precious natural resources, and that the people who think global climate change is a hoax (despite the evidence) but think a supernatural being isn't (despite the lack of evidence) will come to their senses in time.

In the meantime, I'm happy to weather the winters, and also relieved that it is, finally, Spring!