Winter Daze

Winter's back has been broken. It is fifty degrees warmer today in Providence than it was on Monday when we left Bethel, Maine. There are but three more weeks until the Ides of March and the St. Patrick's Day parade of drunken, barfing fools. I associate March with beginnings, much as I do September after Labor Day and back to school. March is the month I moved to New York City and began my first serious job. March is the month when the crew season of racing began, a month of emergent new life, the month of lion and lamb here in New England. I feel torpid in these final days of winter, like a bear, walking out into the sunlight after a winter spent in hibernation and still too groggy to realize that he is hungry. The latent energy is about to transform itself into rebirth, spring and summer industry. I feel ready, rested and energized, yet wary of the ides of March.