There has been cold weather and “snow showers” over the past few days. I guess falling snow is referred to as showers when we really expect that in springtime it should be rain. It has disrupted my pleasant walks with the dogs and long bicycle rides in the river valley. I am a little grumpy about it so I am using this essay to grump a little.

When I think about it, I guess there is really not a spring season in Alberta. What is normally considered spring on the calendar is just winter wearing out over a span of time when people are already worn out by winter.

Those who accept that fact wear layers through the season that should be spring. Those who reject it wear shorts and shiver. They are often side by side on sidewalks and bus stops and would give pause to visitors from outer space investigating life forms on this planet.

As an aside, I sometime imagine myself as such a visitor when passing time observing life around me. It makes an otherwise mundane and boring experience considerably more interesting, not to mention downright amusing. I have wondered if anyone noticed me smirking at what would probably seem pretty strange to an alien.

What passes as spring suddenly becomes summer, the season that seems to paradoxically grow shorter. Those lazy, hazy days of summer are more like a frantic filling of every evaporating moment.

Summer may not be a real season either, just a respite for a tired and resting winter, the presence of balmy days really the absence of bitter cold and snow, the bright sunshine a holdover and a placeholder. Sunny Alberta just means that winter never really goes away.

The fall is really winter’s rise, rarely a well-defined season of its own with those crisp mornings and warm afternoons with a different light and a poignant quality to the warmness that is different from summer. Fall is really shortfall because we rarely get enough of it. Winter is quickly taxiing down the runway fully rested and fueled for take-off.

The weather is often a conversation starter, particularly in Alberta. As Mark Twain so aptly observed, we all complain about the weather but no one ever does anything about it.

I decided this winter to start cross-country skiing again, as my effort to change my relationship with our predominating season given that I cannot change the weather. In doing so, in fairness, despite skiing until late March I do know that there is really is a lot more to Alberta than ten months of winter and two months of bad skiing. There will be flowers.

© C O P Y R I G H T   2 0 0 9.  Gary Holdgrafer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.