Clair McFarland: Sure, False Spring, I’ll Fall For You

Sure I’ll fall for you, false spring.

Don’t put it past me to be duped by some good weather. Also don’t put it past me to be an ascetic monk all winter.  

It’s easy for me to say now, but I don’t think I’ll ever be one of those Wyoming retirees who winters in Arizona. Good for you folks who do that: you’ve got your reasons.

When winter hits the Big Empty and the wasps go back to hell where they belong, my nerves shriek, “And STAY gone!”

Winter brings the scent of woodsmoke. The sting of frost. Quiet nights with a book, livid sunrises and silvery horizons. I spend the dark season withdrawing into myself and the dead authors who tempt me with their verbs.  

The world would stay that way if it were up to me. I’d be like those sailors who crew the Flying Dutchman in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” self-petrifying into a mere artifact on Death’s ship.

But physics and the grand design have better ideas.

February tilts us sunward and hurtles this sapphire into its orbit’s flatter side.

And I never realize just how death-crusted I am or how hard I’ve been brooding until I roll out the dumpster under the psychedelic auspices of false spring’s first warm day.

I’ve never done cocaine. But I imagine the high of anything you can mass-produce diminishes after a short while.

The only highs we reach that are truly human are the ones that blindside us.

So it is with false spring, which zings my sinuses awake and tells me I can leap a building.

I can’t leap a building. I must be high on this weather.

It’s only while steeped in this warmth that I realize how dark and cold the world has been, how withdrawn I’ve been; how cranky the Facebook commenters are, and how everyone’s – including my own – overgrown survival instincts have tortured our better angels.   

Sure we fought to survive. We felt the cold and instead of gathering more firewood and checking on the chickens – like our ancestors would have – we cracked the thorny whip of our ideals across the social sphere. As if attacking each other all the time will stave off winter.

We also handed our survival impulses to the powers that be. We bet them on elections. We surrendered them to people we think can handle this world for us. And we railed at anyone trying to push those mighty powers in a different direction.

Then the false spring emerged. And each one of us wondered why we’ve been fighting so hard.

Why didn’t we just gather firewood and have faith that the sun would come out?

Why didn’t we stash our better angels next to the garden seeds and promise to keep them safe and dry until we could put them to good use?

These are the questions false spring asks.

I’m not blind to the fact that it’s going to snow tomorrow. This warm spell was a trickster and a flirt, designed to put me off my guard.

And it succeeded.

For a couple days I quit brooding and striving in the dark, and I wished good things for every last member of the human race: every last beneficiary of this same sun.

So I don’t regret falling for it.

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.