As A Woman
Email this articleSpringtime for Hitler . . .
by Katharine NilesCynicism, says my friend Dave (see Tombstone I) is the result of "frayed idealism," and so here I sit, hoping every year for bunnies and green grass and tulips and budding leaves to happen all at once. I should know better, of course, being a child of the Rockies. But I don't. My body craves all that by the time mid-March rolls around, and like an idiot I cling to the few warm days as if they might actually last. When they don't I'm left bitter, unresilient, my nose plugged from allergies and this year, anyway, colossal amounts of dust.
This spring has been worse than others. For a couple weeks there we had, as I said, dust. Big wind. Arizona blew into town and stayed. My driveway still has scalloped red-dust swirls in its minute concrete contours ? contours I didn't even know it had until the dust defined them. Then it would attempt to snow. I live at 7,800 feet so you would think the snow would be a substantial 3-6" drop of wet spring glop. But we got, instead, a dusting. This happened several times. I was glad to see the high country received more, but already I'm thinking, "This is Fire Heaven brewing, and just what the global warming docs ordered ? drier lower elevations." The temperature differential was rather astonishing, too. Mid-60s while the dust blew; mid-30s when the storms came in.
Mood swings. Seasonal Affective Disorder, Pissy Variety. Biblical feel to the horizon when the dust blocked the mountains. Blech.
Today was the first nice day in quite a while. I actually got out on my road bike for the first time. I'd expected to do so a lot sooner. But so be it. As in the Mel Brooks' song classic, I'll whistle "Springtime for Hitler" while thinking I live in the song's equivalent of Poland and France. Only I don't. And I continue to have these annoying moments of sheer bliss after riding through a day such as this one. Those Rockies. They con you. A friend of mine says the Navajo say they're a curse. So beautiful you'll never leave, even when you want to.
They could be right. So I'll wring my hands through another bipolar spring, and, frayed idealism intact, make it into summer.
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Friday, April 24, 2009
at 7:43:58 PM
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Dawn says:
Last weekend, the Rockies even had me believing that I actually enjoy a good 1500 foot climb on my bike in the intense cross winds. They are definitely con artists.