“Ne’er cast a cloot ’til May be oot,” as we heard it in Scotland, was a warning, loosely translated, to “never take off a layer until May is over.”That bit of lowland wisdom fits this spring pretty well.As I was donning full winter regalia for my jog this morning my thoughts naturally turned toward the weather.Memory distorts things, of course, but I keep coming back to my youth and thinking late May used to be reliably warm.There were chilly mornings from time to time, but yesterday held a touch of November in the air, as if the world somehow switched axes.Even the usual animals I see—deer, groundhogs, ducks, and the occasional fox or raccoon—all seemed to be sleeping in this morning.Who could blame them?
I postulated in Weathering the Psalms that the weather is somehow connected in our psyches with the divine.It’s God’s big blue heaven, after all.The weather is something we can only control in a bad way, though.While other people are fixated on surviving the coronavirus outbreak Trump has been quietly (although well documentedly) been relaxing environmental regulations so that when this is all over the beleaguered wealthy will have further income streams.And so global warming gets a head start on opening the doors of industry again.Those older than even me tell me the weather is far wilder than when they were young.Perhaps it’s just the Anthropocene hadn’t had time to settle in yet.Or maybe environmental degradation is spitting in the face of God.
First light is beautiful.I’ve been awakening before the sun for so many years now that I can’t recall what it’s like to stumble out of bed when blue begins edging the curtains.When it does I pull on my sneakers and head out the door.It’s easy to pretend out here that everything’s okay.When I do spot a deer, statue-still until I’m mere feet away, I wonder what life was like before the koyaanisqatsi of industrialization.When our human impact on the earth was humble, like that of our fellow animals.Now the weather has turned.It’s chilly out here this morning.I’m wearing a stocking cap and gloves and I’m watching my own breath forming the only clouds in the sky.The weather is a kind of psalm, I guess.I should pull on another clout and consider the wisdom of my elders.
