Spring in your steps

I love March. I love it because it’s the first spring month here in Norway, and I love the Norwegian spring. Spring becomes something special after everything has been buried underneath a mountain of snow for four months. When it gets warmer and it melts away, the world consists only of brown and grey. That’s spring for me. Not the green, the green comes later, but the wonderful period where everything looks dead and bleak, until the sun shines through bare branches down on the road, the asphalt dries up after weeks of melting water, there are small tiny rocks everywhere, on every road, every lawn, children steal off their hats and gloves as soon as their mothers can’t see them and fill the roads with chalky images, because they can, now that everything is dry. That’s spring. Spring is still cold, it’s brown and dull and grey, it’s wearing a thick coat and wrapping a large scarf around yourself. But it’s also no snow, sunshine that finally feels warm upon your skin, sunglasses to ward it off, and a coat that might be thick, but is thinner than the one you wore all winter.  That’s spring.

//flickr