I should never write when it’s late. A night post is always one I rush to reread in the morning because I know it will have been influenced by a late night madness that, upon an early morning glance, appears slightly off the edge. I breathe a sigh of relief if it withstands the scrutiny of predawn hours. I correct a typo or two, and I get on with the day.
The day? Well, I biked again to work and that was fine, brilliant even. I appreciated how much of the lake had melted since yesterday’s photo. Take a look:
But give me a wee bit of credit: it’s still mostly a sheet of ice out there on Mendota, and horefrost on top of frozen waters means that it really looks not unlike the Arctic (as best as I can imagine that to look).
And note, too, that we are, this week, bedazzled by unseasonably warm temps. Fifties, sixties – wonderful stuff that typically belongs to May.
Yet, don’t be too envious. Fact is that when I ride the bike next to the frozen lake early in the morning, the air is chilly. A touch below freezing. And that’s before the wind strikes my face and gives it a good lashing.
You can say this about Madison in spring: mornings are not the same as afternoons. Sleeping time is not the same as waking time. Night posts are not the same as posts written in daylight hours. And yet, it all spins and tumbles, and ultimately you cannot separate one from the other. (Except for this one obvious truth: mornings are colder than afternoons.)
