05.01.13  May Day.  According to Earth & Sky, “it’s an astronomical holiday, one of the year’s four cross-quarter days, or days that fall more or less midway between an equinox and solstice.”  Another one of those pauses between seasons.  In the past two days, we’ve been pummeled by corn snow showers and ferocious high winds with a hard freeze overnight.  On Monday, helicopters buzzed the white-capped lake all afternoon and volunteers shoved the sheriff’s rescue boat out into the frigid waters, in search of two stand-up paddle boarders who reportedly had been swept out toward the middle of the lake by the raging wind.  Finally, at dusk, the search ended when one of the boarders called in to say they had actually made it back to shore safely.

Everybody’s getting somewhat desperate by now for the summer season–even just Spring instead of everlasting Winter.   How else to explain that old tradition in northern countries where villagers erect a tall pole and then dance around it together with ribbons!  You have to manufacture a celebration, somehow, during these pauses.