High Points: Spring awakening

This past week, we got a winter revival, and some badly needed fresh snow fell on our slopes. But for a while there, it was feeling a whole lot like spring had already sprung.

I actually dodged a few yellowjackets on my deck, and there were bluebirds fluttering around under the eaves near my bedroom looking like they were about to begin building a nest. Then, last Sunday, I spied what was either a bobcat or a lynx — I’m not sure which — just outside my living room window. It was a warm day, and he, or she, seemed to be out for a spring stroll in the neighborhood and was not much bothered by the presence of my wife and me or our barking Labrador. It caused a little concern for us, and we paid a lot more attention on our afternoon run. While we didn’t see the cat, if I had to guess, the cat saw us. Meow.

Yes, the animal kingdom is waking up, and they respond not to a clock or a calendar but more to the ever-changing mood of Mother Nature. It gets warm, and the bugs, birds, and animals think it’s spring and act accordingly, be it by building nests or casually cruising in the daytime sun.

We, the people, on the other hand, are programmed to think about the changes of season by repeating the phrase, “Spring forward, fall back,” a bromide designed to help us remember which way to turn the clocks at the beginning of the federally mandated Daylight Saving Time.

Well, this upcoming weekend is the one where we spring forward. On Saturday night/Sunday morning, depending upon how you look at it, we all need to set the clocks one hour ahead, as we move to DST, as it is called. It is a harbinger of spring and, except for the states of Arizona and Hawaii, a part of our shared national experience.

Of course, DST messes with most of our sleep patterns and our circadian rhythms, the only rhythm I have. When we arise on Sunday, we will have “lost” an hour of dream time, and when the evening finally rolls around, we’ll all be a bit more sleepy. Zzzzzzz … Then on Monday, when we wake for work, the sun won’t rise until about 7:10 a.m., leaving many of us to begin our days in the dark. It can take a few days for folks to adjust to the change. Sleep scientists recommend that we do so gradually, moving our get-up-and-go-to-bed times by a few minutes each day.

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in his Poor Richard’s Almanack, and the proverb lives to this day. According to National Geographic, Franklin was an early proponent of tinkering with time in order to take advantage of the number of hours of daylight in the spring and summer. In 1784, he penned an essay entitled, “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” in The Journal of Paris.

There he chided Parisians, who he believed to be inherently lazy because they slept late. He wrote that he had actually seen the sun at 6 a.m. when he arose, noting that, “I saw it with my own eyes. And, having repeated this observation the three following mornings, I found always precisely the same result.” Ben suggested that people could get more use out of the daylight hours and would not have to burn their candles so long at night, if they were more in tune with the sun.

This week, there was much chatter about whether we should stop the practice of changing the clocks twice a year and either stick with daylight savings 24/7/365 or go to “regular” time permanently. Like everything else this spring, there is much disagreement on how to handle it.

I say let’s do what the animals do. Wake with the sun. Sleep with the moon, and follow the time tables set by Mother Nature. Meow.