Observations at Stewart Park, Saturday 3/22

Seagulls swarm the shore, swooping down from the surreal, cloudless sky at the sight of a plastic bag full of broken bread. The wind today is cold but not biting, the sun warming either it or me. I watch the old man in a grey coat scatter the bread. Cayuga Lake looks almost as an ocean today, the wind coaxing small whitecaps out of the waves. My hands jammed deep into my fleece-lined pockets remind me that speing comes slowly, and it's early yet.

Lately, I've been missing California. It's not the weather I miss, exactly, but the atmosphere. Winds blow differently. Water, I think, means something else. but days like today, when the crystals of winter ice are splintering in the background like a thousand falling bells, but I can crack the car window and wear only a hoodie and let in the possibility of bare feet and wet grass, I remember why I came back to the Northeast.

Spring here is a real celebration, a full-blown breaking open of the chest cavity into song. Our beaches here in the middle of New York'd treed hills don't have sand, but those tiny crashes are wave enough for me. It is only because I have lived through the heavy grey of winter's veil, and in fact loved the snow falling and packed into lawn-shaped squares like a new white earth on which to tread, that I am rewarded with the screm-out-loud joy of my chapped fingertips in the first out-the-car-window air. Here, the first thing water means is an icy windsheild and a driveay to shovel, but we still love the lake in spring.