Ignore the Groundhog--Spring's Around the Corner

FEBRUARY 13, 2004
By GREGORY J. RUMMO

     THE GROUND HOG, a.k.a. Punxsutawney Phil may have announced six more weeks of winter earlier this month but what else would you expect from that fat, indolent marmot who is cared for better than most children? Do we really think he’d let on to anything else after some guy dressed in a long coat and a top hat sticks his hand into Phil’s warm burrow and drags him out into the cold, exposing his underbelly to tens of thousands of ecstatic onlookers? 

Try this simple experiment at home to prove it to yourself.

Tomorrow morning, wake up a few minutes before your wife does and push her out of that comfy, warm bed on to the hard floor. Make sure you’ve invited as many neighbors as possible to witness the event. See if the cold winds don’t blow through your bedroom for another six weeks.

There are plenty of other more trustworthy signs that spring is impending—despite what Phil, or the thermometer, or the meteorologist may be telling us.

On February 10, the first and most important portent that spring is just around the corner made its presence felt to anyone driving along Route 208 in Franklin Lakes around 7:30 A.M.—the unmistakable odor of butyl mercaptan—otherwise known as eau de skunk. I suppose one could argue that the skunk can’t stand the smell of himself for too long and rouses from his winter sleep earlier than most of the other denizens of suburbia.

But this skunk was right on the money—it almost hit 50 degrees that afternoon. I rode around with the top of my convertible down although admittedly, I had the windows up, the heater blasting and my winter coat zipped tightly around my neck.   

This has been a winter of impatience for all but the heartiest among us, like my older son, whose snowboard in the garage stands as a constant reminder that not everyone suffers with the winter blues like I do.

Snow and ice have clogged gutters along roofs since December causing many homeowners to find other uses for hair dryers to keep melting ice water from running down the walls inside of their homes. And when the mercury hovered in the single digits for almost three weeks in January, the weather became not just the topic of conversations but the headlines and the front page stories of many newspapers. 

But there are forces at work now that cannot be reversed. Winter’s demise is imminent. 

As the Earth moves farther away from the sun in its orbit in space, it is slowly leaning forward, bowing almost reverently to expose the northern hemisphere to more of the sun’s direct rays. The Earth’s ever steeper angle of inclination will overcome any cooling effects caused by its race to orbital apogee. Already, the sun’s golden rays are increasingly warming our afternoons and lighting our drives to and from work in the mornings and evenings.

There is no snow remaining on the south-facing slopes bordering Lake Edenwold in our backyard. And the upper end of the river that fills our lake revealed itself for the first time this winter, appearing from underneath the sheet of thick ice that had hidden it since it froze over months ago.

A few robins were sighted in Clifton and it won’t be too long before flocks of them arrive en masse along with the red-winged blackbirds and grackles that show up in February and early March.

Huge flocks of common mergansers will shortly appear in the open waters of the lakes and reservoirs dotting the landscape. They’ll stop over for a few days of rest, some flying from as far south as Mexico, before venturing northward to their breeding grounds in Canada from eastern Alaska to Newfoundland. 

And slowly, the ground will bring forth flowers. The trees will bud, and once again, it will be spring. n

Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist. Read all of his columns on his homepage, www.GregRummo.com. E-Mail Rummo at  [email protected]