March 19

March winds are decidedly different than just two months ago. They are at once more gentle and yet strangely biting if the day is just so. The cold winds of January were thick with air, packed closely together so that each gust was an assault. Now, the air is tinged with a coming warmth, where the Aeolus breezes are less forceful, and we feel less need to lean into the wind figurative and literally.

These winds carry a humidity from places west and south, and though they blow with less apparent force, we are stung nonetheless by a fierce chill. This is all the more as March winds seem more constant, as if the gods were apt to stir the pot to shift from winter to spring.

Today is such a day, where the wind built quickly in the morning sun and blew steadily all day, coming down the sides of Wachusett Mountain, across the snow-laden fields, and to our doorstep.

It is not the March winds of my youth, all filled with images of flying kites and early spring flowers. This may be the case in the Midwest, but here we seem locked in the transition between winter and spring.