Winter

I have been experiencing an excess of winter lately. Yes, there is this (10 more inches! March snow, I love you, but please! be done!); but I seem to be accidentally augmenting real winter with fictional otherplace winter.

First, in January, I read a book that took place mostly in winter in upstate New York (Amateur Barbarians). Then I read a book that took place entirely in winter in New York City, and then it was a symbolic, dystopian winter that extended past winter into summer and beyond (Chronic City). Then I started reading a book that so far takes place in wintry Wisconsin (A Gate at the Stairs). Then I listened to The Places in Between, Rory Stewart's (wonderful) account of his walk across Afghanistan in the winter of 2002. Now I'm listening to Endurance, an account of Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic adventure (now there's a book to make winter seem mild. At least I'm not stuck in a 22-foot boat with fifteen other men in a raging Antartic Sea, drenched and rotting and reduced to eating frozen penguins for food! Things are good!)

So, uh...I'm kind of ready for plants. And dry sidewalks. And drinking a beer on a warm summer evening, and riding a bike across town, and dashing about the yard checking on which bulbs have come up. I'm ready for spring, in other words.

How about you?