Love of seasons

On Thursday at work, as I went to get my lunch out of the fridge, I realized with excitement that the weather was nice enough that I'd be able to enjoy sitting outside to eat lunch for the first time this year. After work, I went for a nice little walk in Roxboro Ravine and took advantage of the warm weather and lengthening daylight hours to sit and read for a while at my favorite spot by the waterfall.

As I get older, I realize I'm appreciating more and more these little things that I can reliably look forward to with the passing of the seasons each year.

I love how each spring brings with it the blossoming of trees and flowers and other plants. How everything starts to get green again after a gray winter. How the days get longer and longer (the first time that I come home from work and it's still light out is something I always take note of and enjoy). And of course, the welcome return of warm weather. Since I've gotten into mountain biking, the first warm day that I'm able to get out on my mountain bike and feel the warm breeze on my face and work up a good sweat is a special source of excitement.

I love spring, but honestly? Spring is probably my least favorite season - here in Cleveland it just has more chilly, windy, and rainy weather (see: yesterday and today) than I'd prefer. It's also the season during which mountain bike trails are most likely to have unrideable conditions.

The truth is I love all the seasons and I'm glad to live in a place where I can experience all four.

Perhaps the best thing about spring is the way it turns into summer. Sometimes it takes frustratingly long to get to reliably warm weather, but it always gets there. I love summer because I love getting out in the warm weather and hiking or riding my bike or swimming or just sitting outside on my balcony or by the waterfall and reading a good book. I love summer because I love being able to come home from work and go out for a 90 minute bike ride and still have it be light out when I get home. I love summer because I love cookouts and camping and going to the beach and my family vacation in the Adirondacks and eating ice cream on a warm day.

And I love going to the ravine and escaping from the city into a world where everything is so green.

Fall was for many years my most favorite season of all, although now it's hard to say if I have one favorite. Fall was my favorite mainly because fall is cross country season and for many years running cross country was the most important thing in my life. Since I'm now unable to do any distance running, there's a certain bittersweet element to the fall. Occasionally while driving home I see the cross country team practicing and it hits me just how much I still miss it. But I still love fall. I love the beautiful colors of the trees and the crunch of the leaves beneath my feet on a walk through the woods.

Fall is also a great season for bike rides. And I love sitting by a campfire at night, wearing a hoodie and jeans, enjoying the refreshing crispness of the fall air and the warmth of the flames.

And winter? It's a less popular opinion, but I love winter. I love winter for basically just one reason but it's a really big reason: I adore snow. I always have.

(The summer after eighth grade I went on a three week trip to the British Isles with a student ambassador group. In the report I wrote about the trip, I drew many contrasts between the countries I visited and my home. One was this: "I prefer the climate here in Ohio. It is hot in the summer, which is good for going swimming. It is cold and usually fairly snowy in winter, which is good because I like snow. And it doesn't rain too much. In the British Isles, it doesn't get too hot or cold, and also I wouldn't like all that rain." Growing up in Columbus, though, I was often frustrated by how it didn't snow as much as I wanted in the winter, so it's fitting that I ended up living somewhere with a much snowier climate.)

I think most kids love snow. Unlike a lot of people, I just never "grew out of it." Actually, I was thinking about why snow, for most people as they age, goes from a source of excitement to a source of annoyance. I think it's largely (not entirely, but largely) because for most adults, snow more than anything else is a source of major delays to their commutes. So they forget the exhilaration that snow brought when they were kids. I'd say this is another way that America's car culture saps the joy from people's lives. (What does that mean? you might ask. People have to commute to work and snow will slow those commutes no matter what. What does that have to do with "car culture"? And I would then point out that if we didn't have so much sprawl - which was enabled by our obsession with freeway building - and if we had better public transit, then the aggregate delays caused by snow to people's commutes would be vastly smaller.)

Just as the first warm day of spring when I can go for a nice bike ride is incredibly exciting to me, the first major snowfall of the winter is also incredibly exciting. And the funny thing? Even as the cold of winter drags on into March and I find myself yearning for warmer weather, all it takes is a nice heavy snowfall and that giddy, childlike feeling of excitement comes back. I love sledding. I love going for walks in the snow. I love the peace and tranquility that envelop the city on a snowy winter night. This past winter I started going for mountain bike rides in the snow and I love that too.

Due to various events in my life, over the past, honestly, more than ten years, it's been rare that I've been able to fully appreciate a good winter. This past winter was a good one and I really savored it. There is just something so beautiful about a landscape covered in a fresh blanket of snow. There were several times in the last few months when I went for a walk in the ravine and found myself just full of awe at how much beauty there is in the world and full of gratitude for being alive to experience and appreciate all that beauty. Just being alive really is such a gift.

So yes, I love all the seasons. If I had to live in a place with only one type of weather, I'd probably pick in the 70s and sunny. And if I lived in a place like that, I'd enjoy the weather, but I'd never get excited about it. Whereas in a place with four distinct seasons, I find great excitement in all four. Life is all about change. I guess there's just something reassuring and comforting about those predictable, cyclical changes that the seasons bring. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for a lot of things.