Dawn of a new day

OK, so it's trite... Still, I couldn't help but think of the phrase as I was out getting my exercise this morning. As I completed my neighborhood run, dark was turning to light, street lamps were flickering off and I was reminded of a sweet little ditty from a local writer, Brian Doyle, that we published in today's Sunday Opinion section. Titled "The February Thaw," I thought it provided a nice respite from the political clatter and online shouting that characterize most weekends. Notice how Brian's words evoke the senses:

I had been told, upon arriving in Oregon nearly 20 years ago, about the Thaw -- a magical week in February, an island in the ocean of winter, when the rains ceased, and the roses bloomed, and the temperature rose sometimes into the 70s, and Oregonians emerged from their holes, blinking and scraping off the moss. But it was hard to believe, those first few winters, that this was possible, the silver drumming of the rain being so insistent, the moist ceiling present day after day, the gray mornings chased by metallic afternoons, week after week; but then it happened!

And the next year it happened again! And over the years I have learned not only to crave it but to savor it: the sunlight pouring clean and crisp over the steaming earth, the tree frogs roaring, the citizens stumbling out of their homes into their gardens, the first thrum of lawnmowers, the murky thuck of children running across playing fields that look dry but most certainly will not be until probably August for heavenssake but let us not carp and cavil.

For a while this month, a great gift arrives, and it would be a shriveled spirit who would complain, perfectly logically and correctly, that the rains will return, washing back over Oregon until Independence Day (really, has there ever, ever, been a dry Rose Festival?). Yes, the tide will rise again after the February Thaw, and we will shuffle along mooing in the mist, umbrellas jostling, until that long weekend we call high summer here; but for a moment in February there is a week of broad friendly light that thrills the wet mammal inside each of us. A salute to the Thaw!

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland.

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photo: Richard Stebbing