THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503160180
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
The original Mayor Richard Daly of Chicago used to say that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day and I'm sure that this morning there are more than a few people named Reinhardt, dePalma, Lopez and Goldstein still getting over very green hangovers.
We love to celebrate and we will celebrate almost anything. None of us have enough holidays of our own, so we appropriate those of others and more power to us.
But coming up tomorrow is a day of enormous importance that will go largely unnoticed.
I speak, of course, of the vernal equinox, the very beginning of spring.
It has not been a particularly hard winter around here. But then, except for those of us who live too close to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and get pounded by nor'easters, we rarely have particularly hard winters. But that is no reason not to celebrate its end.
The coming of spring has forever stirred poets, musicians, young lovers and almost everyone else. The hope of renewal, dormant in the soul through the gray days of winter, jumps forward to claim its rightful place.
I especially like spring on the Outer Banks. The sea breeze across still-cold water has a chilling effect, but that is all right.
It may not be as lush and green here as it is farther inland, but it has a special quality all its own. Sit in the dunes, protected from the wind, on a sunny day and you will understand what I am talking about.
But it is more than the changing weather that grabs my attention this time of year.
I like driving from Duck to Ocracoke in March and April, watching the place come alive again. Everywhere there are shop owners sprucing up their establishments for the coming season. Signs are being replaced, windows washed and everything aired out.
Cottages are being painted and boats prepared for another summer on the water. The mixture of old and new, of things eternal and things that will bloom and pass before the next equinox, is stunning.
There is a sense of relaxed urgency, a purposefulness. Soon, perhaps even next weekend, if the weather cooperates, the hordes from the northland will arrive and everyone must be ready.
Late tomorrow, the sun will cross over the equator, beginning its trip that will eventually have us all complaining about the heat of summer.
The day and the night will be of equal length and then sunshine will begin to gain on darkness.
The vernal equinox is more than a mark on the calendar, more than another arbitrary measure of passing time and changing season.
It is a feeling, one of the best feelings of the year.
Get out and enjoy it. by CNB