The early morning sky is deceiving as the fresh April day announces itself.
As the first orange of the rising sun crests the horizon, illuminating a group of well-defined thunderheads, a wide and natural brush appears to have painted a tall and broad mountain range.
It’s a fleeting mirage as the growing glow reveals the reality — the orange has turned decidedly reddish; urban “sailors” soon will take warning and cover.
A “passage” time is upon us once again. Just as Labor Day mentally signals the beginning of fall and Memorial Day signals the beginning of summer, this first post-Easter weekend signals more than the obvious resurrection. Or at least it is supposed to.
Just as the urge to nest and cocoon comes not long after Labor Day, fueled by the first hints of foreboding northwest winds, the urge to fully step out and explore comes with the sun and the warmth Memorial Day typically, hopefully, features.
But it is this weekend after an early Easter that, if we are lucky, also brings more regular southwest breezes, carrying the promise of sweeter air and vivid rainbows, real and metaphorical.
While we won’t be so lucky this weekend – yes, more late snow is in the forecast — let’s hope the moderating, milder week-ahead forecast is something resembling accurate.
The red skies now have churned into a storm-hue purple. A bona fide gale has whipped up, heralding yet another cold front. In the distance, there’s a sense of a streaking fog that’s, in reality, a rapidly moving rain sheet.
It arrives much as does a bucket of water being discarded. And with it, reinforcing the fear that spring might never arrive.
Makeshift “ports”— a bus stop shelter here, a building entryway there, an underpass anywhere – harbor those caught by surprise (or at least feigning surprise to mask their umbrella-less dilemma).
But as quickly as they roiled in, the showers are spent. There’s no rainbow this morning. And the exhaust of a passing bus masks any sweetness that would have been the consolation prize.
Flecks of snow replace the rain. And the operative phrase over the next few days will continue to be “Put another log on the fire, honey; it’s still cold outside.”
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
