Suddenly, Spring....Maybe

Suddenly, last Friday, Spring! Instead of cold, damp, cloudy and snowing, it turned brilliant. Not diamond-hard cold brilliant as in a dry winter morning. But soft, blue and fragrant brilliant. The songbirds unwrapped their winter mufflers from their throats, leaped to the tops of the trees and telephone wires and unfurled their spring songs. The mountains held onto patches of snow in their north-facing crannies, but the rest of the world faced a warm and warming sun.


It’s true that we have had an unusually cold, wet and snowy winter; very unlike last winter (our first here) that was dry, mild and sunny. Led us to think all winters were like that, and that’s where Silver City got it’s moniker: “Four Gentle Seasons.” Not all. If you talk to those who’ve been here ‘only’ 8 or 10 years, they say this winter was unusual, atypical, even unheard of. If you talk to natives or virtual-natives, they’ll tell you that they remember winters like this…but not many. Just so, native Washingtonians – the few of us that there are – would tell you that this winter in DC was not a once-in-a-100-year winter, although certainly not typical any longer.

I read last week that the snow pack is the deepest up at elevation (9K and higher) that it has been in many years of long-standing drought. The snow-melt down the Gila side of the local ranges is expected to be 2 ½ times normal runoff; the snow-melt down the Mimbres up to 4 ½ times. A lot of water, much needed here and in the desert, on the surface and to recharge the aquifers. And the desert bloom is expected to be spectacular. We’re planning to plan some trips out and around to go desert-bloom-peeping!

And Maybe the snow isn’t quite done with us yet. Seems like every Monday for weeks, I’ve gotten up to snow. I resisted complaining for a long time: after all, I could have been in DC this winter. But it finally got to me. I even started giving weather reports on Facebook in a sorta whiny kinda voice! If all the snow that fell on Mondays for the last several weeks stuck, we would have been in direct competition with DC for snow-on-the-ground accumulation. At least here, the ground never really freezes, and the snow accumulates a little then melts. We had at most 3 or 4 inches on the ground at any one time, that would then be gone the next day – except in the north-facing crannies. After a glorious weekend, I woke up again this Monday…to snow falling! Those poor songbirds, back into their winter mufflers for another day.

On Sunday a week ago, Silver City put on our first annual (we hope) International Women’s Day Parade and Celebration. It started because 3 women had coffee together (or whatever) and started some back-of-the-napkin thinking. As an aside, I contend that most of the most ingenious inventions, the most creative solutions, and the germination of the most imaginative art started on the back of a napkin: linen, cotton, hi-class paper or Papa John’s, napkins are the stage and the floor for creative sketching. Anyway, the three began imagining what a parade to celebrate Int’l Women’s Day could be like, here. What we ended up with was a colorful parade of floats and puppets, street drummers and dancers, and women in costumes representing their wildest dreams (at least those that could be expressed in a family parade). One of the highlights of the parade was the large characterization of the fertility Venus of Willendorf, the 4-inch original of which was dated 24,000BCe. Women marched carrying banners and girls marched carrying hand-painted cardboard signs acknowledging the women they admired, everyone from grandmothers and sisters to the Virgin of Guadeloupe and an Indian Bodhisattva. Men marched wearing t-shirts with the acknowledgement, “Awaiting Instructions.” In addition to the pictures included here, check out my Flikr album of the parade!


This was one of the days when Mother Nature (She’s probably an international woman. That’s probably why she cooperated at the last minute) couldn’t quite decide which season she was; the morning started with something white, changed to rain, rained on and off until 1:25. The parade was planned to start at 2 pm. At 1:50 the skies turned blue with gentle cumulus and long mares’ tails clouds. The parade was over by 2:40 and it was raining again at 3:05.

In the way unique to a small town, that single weekend (from Friday March 5 through Sunday March 7) found our entire weekend’s schedule featured on the front pages of the Silver City Sun News: on Friday, a close friend was featured front-page above the fold in a photograph showing her painting, as part of the story on First Fridays; on which for the next several months, several galleries will be open late, with hors d’oeuvres featuring either artists’ new works or new artists’ works. Our friend, Sue, owns Yello on Yankee gallery and she was featuring a new series. Below the fold on the same front page was the group for which we held tickets later the same evening, the Boulder Acoustic Society. And of course, Silver’s own Venus of Willendorf was on the front page on Monday. Try to find your entire weekend covered by the Washington Post, including images of your friends and neighbors on the front page -- that is to say, assuming the story isn’t a tragic one or doesn’t involve 36 inches of snow!

So Maybe it is really Spring. Maybe this last Monday was the last time I’ll start my week watching white stuff drift by my window. And Maybe we’re solidly into the next Silver City season – the Windy season! ss