Poor Will's Almanack: February 18 - 24, 2020

Instinctively summer is accepted as the normal condition of the earth, writes naturalist, Edwin Way Teale. Winter as the abnormal. Summer is ‘the way it should be.’ It is as though our minds subconsciously returned to some tropical beginning, some summer-filled Garden of Eden I thought of these lines I drove back to Ohio from a brief trip to the Florida Keys this past month. It wasn’t that the change was disheartening or surprising. I had made that trip dozens of times through the years, and I knew what to expect in almost any month. But once again I was reminded of Teal’s assertion, the idea that winter is abnormal, that there is something wrong with the cold, something the way it shouldn’t be. The Spartan alternative view, of course, is to man or woman up to the challenges, to exult in the beauty of the snow and the comfort of the fireside. After all, the increasingly hot summers are not necessarily so desirable. Most first world people hide from August’s sun in shade or in air