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Spring In One Day

As usual, it only took one day to go from full winter outfits to mere bikinis. Spring blossomed hastily and the town was sneezing with joy.

I make it to the quiet rock pier which I liked last summer and take my shoes off. This time, though, it’s not quiet. Everyone is out enjoying the rare, cherished summer day. What a treat, to not be freezing. 

Not freezing
Worth some sneezing

A group of three young men to my left are already quite drunk. Too loudly, one of them removes his shoes, but for different reasons than me. He asks for his friend’s phone and climbs down the slanted rocky edge, precariously. The danger isn’t a long fall, but he might well hit his head and it would be difficult to help him out of the cold water. 

Once satisfied with his stance, he says ”Look straight ahead” and his friends, male, put on a misty-eyed, duck-faced gaze into the horizon blasting with a sun that isn’t setting. 

The barefooted climber then aims, chuckles, and aims some more, twisting his body into an impossible angle, not holding onto anything. 

Miraculously, he survives the Instagram moment and a 24-hour story is born. I hope his followers appreciate the effort. He crawls back to his spot, staring into the sun. 

Two minutes later, he walks past me to the very end of the pier, luckily hidden by some even larger rocks, and empties his body of excess beer. 

Meanwhile, the waves arrive at my feet calmly and seagulls make their calls. I imagine they are announcing the arrival of spring to each other – or is it summer? A boat passes, blasting my least favourite genre of songs, and the waves get bigger. A tiny ant runs over my toes, which must feel like hills to him. In the distance, I hear a tram crossing the bridge. 

Creatures large and small 
Give this sunny day their all
Even risk a fall

(The haiku is for Sandy)

34 replies on “Spring In One Day”

Ha! “Spring blossomed hastily and the town was sneezing with joy.” I love this sentence. And “Not freezing / Worth some sneezing”. You carry over this sense of sudden summer so well. I thought of you as I was walking bestia today in my sandals and short sleeves. The sun was peeking out among the clouds but I was cold. The air is so chilly for some reason. The sun in May used to be scorching. I don’t know what happened. So I’m pretty sure your temperatures are higher than ours. My phone says 15 degrees.

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It certainly feels higher, whatever the real temperature difference is. As soon as it’s over 10-15C here, it feels like we’re being pampered ☺️ today was probably 18-20C but windy and the wind was cold, as usual. Also partly cloudy. The weekend should bring rain… It is odd that the tempatatures over there are lower than usual. I’m attributing it all to climate change. Who knows?

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That is beautifully written. A short story. Over here spring has come quickly as well. Not in one day, and it is still a bit to cold for time of year, but suddenly the trees are green and the gardens are speckled with the colour of tulips and other floral creatures that I can’t name. Now too I want a shore to sit and have ants climbing the mountains of my toes. 🙂

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Thanks, Peter for reading 🙂 It’s cold for the time of year here too, but people just jumped right into t-shirts and shorts after that painfully long pandemic winter. I guess we all needed a break from it, a distraction. Hoping you’ll soon see ants on your toes 😀 Take care!

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Congratulations on your emergence from winter, though it sounds like you could plunge back in just as quick. Your young men could be young men anywhere. I remember because I was one once and I also miraculously survived!

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Thank you for the Haiku!
Like Manja I love “sneezing for joy”.
I know the feeling … every morning I’m sneezing for the joy of spring and almost-summer. It’s still cool here – single digits at night but when the sun shines and it’s 15C, it’s great!
Love your capture of the young men. Unlike them, you don’t need an Instagram picture to capture the moment.

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Hehee, thanks Sandy! Words are us bloggers’ instagram, eh? 🙂 Canada certainly seems to have similar weather as we do. I had to look up which city you lived in, since I forgot, and your about-page says Ucluelet, which upon googling sounds very exotic and different to what I imagined your whereabouts would be! May I ask what brought you there? Work?

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I’ll have to check my About page. We actually live in two places. Most of the time we’re in Toronto which is the largest city in Canada with a population of over 6 million. It’s on southernly Great Lakes area and is what I fondly call the tropical region of Canada.

We also have second home on Vancouver Island, which is on the west coast. Ucluelet is the exact opposite of Toronto. It’s a small town clinging to the wild Pacific side of the island. Beyond Ucluelet there’s nothing but 7500km of ocean to Japan.
Ucluelet means ‘safe harbor’ in Nuu-chah-nulth and indicates how wild & treacherous the coast can be. It has a population of 1,719 …1,717 when we are not there 😉

As to why we went there … when we retired and returned home from Singapore, we looked around for a different place to live. We fell in love with Ucluelet but couldn’t quite convince ourselves to leave Toronto entirely. So, we now enjoy the best of both … until the Covid lockdown prevented travel. Hopefully we’ll head back later this year.

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Ah, that explains it! I think I was imagining you in Toronto and got puzzled 😀 They certainly do sound like polar opposites! And how amazing that you can enjoy both and that you have a person by your side who wants to do that too 🙂

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The poet energes! So you are getting into the haiku swing too? Yay!
Sneezing for joy and ‘worth some sneezing,’ evokes in me thoughts of a burst of Scandi spring-yellow blossom and warmer days. 15 degrees here also yesterday. It was glorious. Someone said, “what wonderful winter weather,” and I replied, “just like a Danish summer!” Except it wasn’t Denmark and there was no young man relieving himself at my beach. They were all at the pub.
Enjoy.

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Pubs here might be closed (not sure, because I have no need to check) and maybe that’s what brought the party outdoors to the pier and numerous boats passing. One boat had a dozen people and it wasn’t big at all so the youngsters were just squeezing next to each other while the music was blasting loudly in all directions, carried by the waves to unwilling listeners like myself… And yes, our summer weather at best is like your winter!!! 😀 Take care, Amanda! 🙂

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You are taking me back to my memories of Scandinavia, As unwilling as you were to hear the Scandi ‘yobbos,’ it does remind me of moments from my trips to the north which is always a nice thing to ponder about.

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You deserve it! Our daughter lives in Boston, which seems to have followed your pattern of winter to spring (really, summer!) overnight, and I got to be there for the transformation this past weekend. Living in a northern clime definitely makes spring all the sweeter!

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Finally Spring came to you..! definitely worth the wait huh.
Over here it´s raining and still cold, so again, no tshirts and sandals.Though we dream of sunny skies, chilly windy days will probably stay until the end of the month.
I really enjoyed this post and yes, I´m sneezing too cuz of Allergy.Ciao.

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