The sun “crosses the line” that day; spring crosses with him; and I cross over with the spring.
Let it snow! I have had winter enough. Let the wind rage! It cannot turn back the sun; it cannot blow away the “equinoctial line”; it cannot snow under my determination to have done, here and now, with winter!
The sun crosses to my side of the Equator on the 21st of March; there is nothing in the universe that can stop him. I cross over the line with him; and there is nothing under the sun that can stop me. When you want it to be spring, if you have the sun on your side of the line you can have spring. Hitching your wagon to a star is a very great help in getting along; but having the big sun behind you—
“When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox”
is a tremendous help in ridding you of a slow and, by this time, wearisome winter, storm-wind and all.
Almanacs are not much to trust in; but if ever you prize one, it is on the 21st of March,—that is, if you chance to live in New England. Yet you can get along without the almanac—even in New England. Hang it up under the corner of the kitchen mantelpiece and come out with me into the March mud. We are going to find the signs of spring, the proofs that this is the last day of winter, that the sun is somewhere in the heavens and on this side of the equatorial line.
Almanac or no, and with all other signs snowed under, there are still our bones! Spring is in our bones. I cannot tell you how it gets into them, nor describe precisely how it feels. But, then, I do not need to. For you feel it in your bones too—a light, hollow feeling, as if your bones were birds’ bones, and as if you could flap your arms and fly!
Only that you feel it more in your feet; and you will start and run, like the Jungle-folk, like Mowgli—run, run, run! Oh, it is good to have bones in your body, young bones with the “spring-running,” in their joints, instead of the grit of rheumatism to stiffen and cripple you!