Day Fifty-Five: Someday, It Might Stop Being Freezing.

There was a point in time, probably in high school, when I claimed winter was my favorite season. I was young and full of art and life, and saw the beauty of dormant nature during winter like the world was a black and white photograph. Now, winter presents itself in a much less glamorous and artistic way. It's cold. In fact, it's really, really cold. As an adult, this means that while the plants and animals of the world might lay in a sleepy protective state, I still have to get up early in the morning, go outside in freezing conditions, and scrape nature's beautiful, frozen, irritating dew off my windshield. Winter hardly has the appeal it once did.

Now, maybe because I'm a little less artistic and a little more easily irritated, winter is terrible. I still think it's beautiful, but only from indoors, as many people do. The plants aren't quite so dormant, but are so cold they fight for their lives by going to sleep for several months in order to keep their species going. It lasts, in this area, most of the year. Spring is just a mere thought, as it truly exists for only a two-week span of time, usually at the end of April or beginning of May. Flowers start to bloom, birds start tweeting, and it's enjoyable to walk outside in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Then it gets mercilessly hot and humid, and summer lasts until winter. It's the vicious cycle of Pennsylvania.

As I stood at the gas station today in the cold air of February, a thought occurred to me as a slight breeze blew. I felt, if I really tried, a little bit of spring crispness in the air. It was still cold, but it was the kind of cold that felt more like the inside of a refrigerator than the kind that creeps up inside your coat and threatens to strangle the life out of you: the kind that feels like it will last forever. It felt like winter was maybe starting to give up a little, and make way for spring, somewhere down the road, maybe a month from now.

The unfortunate truth is, I'm probably full of it, and was most likely delirious from the cold. In a month from now, it will likely have snowed three more times, and will continue to freeze my windshield through the beginning of April. But a girl can hope, right?