BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO
This week, I’m ruminating about Spring.
“It’s May, it’s May, the lusty month of May…” plays on infinite loop inside my head this time of year. I’m Vanessa Redgrave swinging over the lovely gardens of Camelot until I peek outside and view my neglected garden overrun with dirt, dog dung, and weeds. I’m going to choose to ignore the symbolism of the garden vis-à-vis my internal or external state of being and concentrate on the season itself. For this is the month where spring matures and blooms, at least in my neck of the woods here in the rear of the Wasatch. Those garden weeds sprouted dainty purple blossoms and the little grass remaining in the yard has grown tall with tips that have turned magenta, which leads me to believe it isn’t grass after all. The 4 o’clock winds have returned, playfully knocking over yard furniture each afternoon as a weather front rapidly appears, threatens to release a downpour of major proportions, then changes its mind and disappears over the bluff with the sun in warmish pursuit. Dust infiltrates the house with abandon, but that is preferable to the onslaught of mud that overwhelmed the kitchen floor during the previous month. My disposition warms as if based on an algorithm of sunshine divided by time.
A couple of years ago, it was a different story, because I lived in a place where May was not welcome and if possible, would be avoided altogether. In Fairbanks, Alaska, Spring lasts two to three weeks tops, and oh, what eventful weeks those were. Outsiders (anyone who lives outside Alaska) assume January is the most dangerous month. Au contraire, it’s May. For May starts out as the end of winter, so the snow that has blinded us, insulated us, and ironically, made it easier to travel about the countryside, starts to melt. By mid-May, the frozen ground heaves in surprise at the warmth emanating from the sun and like a hungry bear emerging from hibernation, lashes out as the permafrost melts to tempofrost, resulting in a messy, muddy, holey landscape, that is ripe for twisted ankles, out-of-alignment autos, and bruised posteriors. Furthermore, river ice starts to break up as it melts, and the creaking and groaning can be heard for miles. Debris and logs make their way downriver, clogging up the banks and flooding low-lying areas. Drivers have to choose between driving on quagmire-like roads and getting stuck, or driving on the river and sinking as the ice buckles under the weight of the automobile (and its occupants).
It’s no wonder Fairbanksans call Spring, “Breakup.” Unlike Camelot, where May signals the stirrings of romance and love, May in the muskeg is a foul, stinky affair, ripe for dissolution. Temperatures can swing 90 degrees in a couple of days from -40F to +50F and the breakage of pipes, house foundation piers, septic systems, and skin due to these temperature swings brings unwanted liquids pouring into homes, onto streets, and into fast-food restaurants unprepared for taiga climate patterns and patrons oozing goo.
Not only is May the month of mayhem, it awakens the most destructive force of all, the Alaskan state bird, otherwise known as the mosquito. The first wave hits during Breakup and even though these giant snow skeeters are slow and loopy, the skinwalkers, with flesh uncovered for the first time since October, are lumbered with half-forgotten reaction times and swat lugubriously at the blood-swollen insects as if in a slow-motion patty-cake dance that ends with a slip and fall into brackish peat. The lusty month of May indeed.
Now that I’ve moved from a boreal landscape to a desert landscape, May is welcomed back with open arms. Spring lasts a good four to six weeks in eastern Utah, and even though it snowed earlier this week, the flakes didn’t stick, so there was no harm, no foul. Mosquitoes are few and far between and sod that was purchased last summer was finally laid. It’s been over a dozen years since I’ve had lawn and that was when the family lived in central Pennsylvania where May meant rain and spontaneous plant-growth. It’s been twenty years since I’ve had to water a lawn, so hubby and I have been doing it by hand. He’s an easterner and is unacquainted with the ways of the garden hose. I, on the other hand, spent a good chunk of my childhood hand watering plants and adjusting lawn sprinklers until Dad shelled out for an automatic system. Hubby volunteered to water in the morning since he’s up early for work, not understanding that the best time to water the lawn is 3:00, not 6:00 in the morning. Turns out, May is Breakup season in Utah, too.
~ Emery Lamb
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