Perhaps no place highlights the four seasons more dramatically than Ohio. The summers are hot and humid and the winters are cold and dreary. Athens is no exception to the Buckeye State's reputation.
Athens doesn't seem to get nearly the amount of snow other parts of the state do - in fact, only this year's crop of Ohio University seniors has ever had a substantial enough snowstorm to win a coveted snow day. Instead, our Athenian winters consist mostly of bleak and bitter mornings greeting weary students headed for those unfortunate 8 a.m. classes. Athens is bad for sledding and snowball fights, and, consequently, bad for our temperaments. This year has been a little brighter, but no less miserable.
But winter, it seems, has finally passed.
Yesterday was not particularly pleasant, with spotty rain and threatening skies, but the chill that so frequently accompanied any walk out the door the past few months was noticeably absent. There have been some false starts to spring - we all look back fondly on that mid-quarter spring oasis about a month ago - but just as we know it was but a tease, so will we know that inevitable cold spring day is but an empty threat.
As much as weather is one of the few sure-fire conversation starters among strangers, it is also part of our collective Midwestern identity. Hope does indeed spring eternal in places like Athens, precisely because we can appreciate the dynamic between the beauty of May and the bitterness of January. The weather is symbolic of our lives - periods of dark and light, with hope, justifiably or not, always on the horizon.
So as spring whisks winter away, remember that the cold days make us appreciate the golden ones ahead, while rejoicing that winter, and Winter Quarter, are nearly at an end.
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Spring time brings a fresh outlook
