"It might seem that spring in Maine comes on in fits and starts, but something so inexorable is taking place that even a sudden April storm (I can remember one in May) dropping a perfect white snow onto the world isn't going to slow this business down. Because just as suddenly, the sky will become completely blue, and the sun will shine so brilliantly you'll be blinded for a minute by the dazzle-and then will come the shimmer from the quickly melting spring snow, the water dripping steadily off the trees. In a few days there'll be some fat yellow dandelions close to the ground. As the days get warmer, the air feels sweeter, and in spite of the increasing vim and vigor of color-forsythia bushes that have burst into blossom beside old red barns, daffodils blooming, the tulips that finally open wide-it is the sweetness in the air that throws me off guard, causes some restless disturbance in my soul. It's as though the forwardness of nature forces in me a piercing and poignant nostalgia. I suddenly remember how the sun falls on granite stones and bakes them warm. How it bathes the moss in the woods bright green. How all sorts of things begin poking up through the pine needles; fiddle heads ready to unfurl, a trillium in bloom, deep green leaves of wild lilies of the valley, white Indian pipes, violets, hepaticas.....-Elizabeth Strout, "Maine, The Seasons."
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