Monday, February 14, 2011

The Five Seasons

After the past few months of bitterly cold weather pushing into historically "safe" southern climes, I've come to the conclusion that my litany of seasons needs to allow for a fifth season.

Pre-Summer, Summer, Post-Summer, and Christmas do not allow for the inhuman conditions that have been visited on us during the early months of  two consecutive years.

I had counted on January, February, and March of 2010 being a fluke, but with early 2011 bringing a repeat performance I am forced to acknowledge weather patterns just might be changing.

But what to name that fifth season?  I have been struggling with that for several weeks now. The season of Hibernation was a forerunner possibility, but since human kind can't just bar the doors for weeks at a time, it wasn't really the best fit.

Then a friend came to visit this weekend, remarked on the welcome warm weather, and commented that walking out the door into forty degree temperatures is like waking from a nightmare.

And there it was  - the name of the fifth season. Nightmare.  What better way to describe the bone chilling wind and life threatening snow and ice that have plagued us the past few weeks.  I fear recent days are but a brief waking from Nightmare, but ultimately Pre-Summer will prevail.

1 comment:

Joey said...

I believe that Nightmare should be a "subseason." It occurs unpredictably and is scattered. On these grounds "Christmas" should be changed to "Chrismas/Nigtmare." On the good days, the season shall be Christmas and on the bad days, it will be Nightmare.