Henrietta Hay's Column

Temperature: 70. Sunshine: bright. Sky: blue. Wind: none. Ah, 'tis spring. But no. Only a newcomer to the Grand Valley would think that. Actually, spring in Colorado is that brief interval between pretty cold and very hot, which usually lasts about 48 hours sometime in May.

Today is a perfect spring like day. By the time this appears in print we may well have six inches of snow on the ground and/or a temperature of 15.

Even so, the spirit of renewal starts to bubble in us with the first day of perfect weather, and we convince ourselves that this year will be different. It really is spring.

One of my neighbors was out with the hose today washing his window screens, a harbinger of spring. Another one took off this morning with his fishing gear and returned with his usually spotless car resembling a mudball. The golfers are wearing shorts.

Either someone around here has a very small trowel, or the skunks have awakened and started digging. There are neat little holes all over the lawn. The robins never left this year, but they seem especially confident now as they tug things out of the grass. The trees in my yard are have buds on them. There are six tiny crocuses blooming beside the City Hall.

The one absolute sign of spring that we have been able to count on for nearly 100 years is major league baseball. Beer Field, known to some as Coors Field, in Denver is lying in pristine purity waiting for the first baseball game. Spring may be very late this year.

The panic season has begun for the fruit growers and they probably won't sleep very well until last until the last frost, whenever that may be.

It's only March. March is the month with a sense of humor, the, "tomboy with tousled hair, a mischievous smile, mud on her shoes and a laugh in her voice," according to Hal Borland.

Lest you doubt the power of spring storms around here, the Guinness Book of World Records reports that the world record snowfall for a 24 hour period was 76 inches at Silver Lake, Colorado, wherever that is, on 14-15 April, 1921. That might have been the year I got roller skates for my birthday and couldn't try them out for a week. I have never trusted spring since.

According to the weather experts, spring is the wettest season of the year in Colorado but this year may be an exception. That weekend last month, when the skies opened up on the mountains and the eastern slope, may have nosed out spring this year. Those people who were caught on I 70 when it was closed for nearly 24 hours probably believed that spring would never come.

On that same weekend when only 17 flakes fell here in the Banana Belt, I had a family discussion about spring. My Houston son said smugly that he had been reading in the hammock all afternoon. My Phoenix son said he had been out looking hopefully at the swimming pool, but -- soon, but not yet.

The poets, of course, thrive on spring. Robert Browning said it best. "The year's at the Spring /And day's at the morn . . . God's in his heaven / All's right with the world."

Emily Dickinson put her finger on the crazy season, "A little Madness in the Spring / Is wholesome even for a King."

Coleridge never saw Colorado, but he described it. ""Tis a month before the month of May / And the Spring comes slowly up this way."

Frank Loesser may have been thinking of us when he gave this title to a song. "Spring will be a little late this year."

Whatever the poets say, or how warm it is in March, it is spring in Colorado when you can smell it. You can't describe it, but you can smell it. It is spring after the last week in April. It is spring after daylight-saving time knocks all our biological clocks out of kilter. And here in Grand Junction it is officially spring when the neck is broken on the swan on Grand Mesa.

I wonder. Could this year be different? Nah.