I left the Pacific Northwest as my life was teetering on the leading edge of summer. I was 24, and I was off for adventure. It was the end of May and spring was beginning to morph into summer in the PNW, too. The trees were greening, flowers were blooming, birds were nesting. With my new husband, I was heading out to tour the country in our homegrown camper-retrofitted VW bus: Orange Crate. It was 1976 and the country was celebrating its bicentennial. At the end of our Great Adventure we were moving to the other edge of the continent, where we would bounce between the mid-south and the deep south, though we didn’t know it yet. And I didn’t know it would be 37 years before I saw another Washington spring.
I am not a fan of southern seasons (especially summer), except for spring. Spring in the South is magnificent. It begins early, when children (and me) are still hoping for a renegade snowstorm. The daffodils bloom in January and every year people exclaim about how early they are. As the air warmed, weekends found me in the garden: looking for the hostas to poke up out of the nothingness of frozen earth; for the sedum and green shoots from the banana tree to emerge from the ground among last year’s frozen stalks; for buds on the brown hydrangea canes that I took for dead the first year; for the pansies I had planted in October to come out of hibernation and grow into the spaces. I watched to see if the Lenten rose would begin blooming at the beginning of Lent or hold off until Palm Sunday and stood eye-ball-to-eyeball with the cardinals in the greening Rose-of-Sharon tree out my second floor window.
The dogwood begins its step-dance toward glory. First the bud, then petals that take their sweet time opening like the roof of a planetarium to reveal the seeds like the stars, and then turn snow white and take on bragging rights. The shy redbuds edge in around the dogwood along the interstates, and the azaleas try their best to steal the show. I am not a fan of azaleas eleven months out of the year, but when the blazing scarlet and orange, the demure pink, the deep purple are flashing their stuff in yards across the awakening city, it is good to be alive.
All of this to say, in my three and a half decades away I never returned to the PNW in the spring. I came in the winter for Christmas. I came in the summer because I despise the southern heat and humidity－ and summer is glory time in this corner of the land. I came in the fall because it is still summer in the fall in the South as I waited impatiently to turn off the air conditioning. But spring in North Carolina is not to be missed. And so, in the autumn of my life now, this will be my first one here since my 24-year-old self moved from spring into summer several lifetimes ago.
I go looking for signs of spring on Friday. It is a spectacular cloudless day; Mt. St. Helens shouting out against the blue. I find clusters of tiny snowdrops－a fairy angel choir rehearsing Easter. A solitary yellow wild strawberry blossom. Half-a-dozen reticent blooms on the espaliered forsythia. Tiny crocuses peek up cautiously just above ground level. The buds on the flowering quince are a little bigger and one of the daffodils has a swollen top. There are tiny buds climbing the stems of the chrysanthemums that should have been cut down after the first frost.
As I write it is raining again, the misty almost-can’t-see-it rain. The weather forecaster called it wet fog the other day. It’s what makes the summer here a gloriousity－ when it finally comes sometime in July, when southerners are looking for escape. I look forward to rediscovering this forgotten season in my new old home, but I am mourning spring in the South. I anticipated this. I already have my ticket to North Carolina in April.
The dogwood begins its step-dance toward glory. First the bud, then petals that take their sweet time opening like the roof of a planetarium to reveal the seeds like the stars, and then turn snow white and take on bragging rights. The shy redbuds edge in around the dogwood along the interstates, and the azaleas try their best to steal the show. I am not a fan of azaleas eleven months out of the year, but when the blazing scarlet and orange, the demure pink, the deep purple are flashing their stuff in yards across the awakening city, it is good to be alive.
All of this to say, in my three and a half decades away I never returned to the PNW in the spring. I came in the winter for Christmas. I came in the summer because I despise the southern heat and humidity－ and summer is glory time in this corner of the land. I came in the fall because it is still summer in the fall in the South as I waited impatiently to turn off the air conditioning. But spring in North Carolina is not to be missed. And so, in the autumn of my life now, this will be my first one here since my 24-year-old self moved from spring into summer several lifetimes ago. 
I go looking for signs of spring on Friday. It is a spectacular cloudless day; Mt. St. Helens shouting out against the blue. I find clusters of tiny snowdrops－a fairy angel choir rehearsing Easter. A solitary yellow wild strawberry blossom. Half-a-dozen reticent blooms on the espaliered forsythia. Tiny crocuses peek up cautiously just above ground level. The buds on the flowering quince are a little bigger and one of the daffodils has a swollen top. There are tiny buds climbing the stems of the chrysanthemums that should have been cut down after the first frost.
As I write it is raining again, the misty almost-can’t-see-it rain. The weather forecaster called it wet fog the other day. It’s what makes the summer here a gloriousity－ when it finally comes sometime in July, when southerners are looking for escape. I look forward to rediscovering this forgotten season in my new old home, but I am mourning spring in the South. I anticipated this. I already have my ticket to North Carolina in April.
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