It was a gray day for a walk, in mid-March, one of the last days before restaurants were closed for sit-down meals. But it was spring. And outside of the northernmost parts of the world, spring is a real, long season: months of slowly increasing fresh green and seas of flower colors and birds going crazy in the sunlight.

It was not until I moved to Cambridge that I really paid attention to the length of spring, and how lovely it was. Even in the southernmost parts of Finland, spring (usually still) means snow cover into March, sporadic snow showers throughout April, a few first timid spring flowers in late April and early May – and then an explosion of green during a few weeks, when everything transforms from dead into full-blown summer in June. The summer warmth sneaks in slowly and often midsummer, in the third week of June, is cold even in the South.

Here in Denmark there is none of such fickle nonsense. The days are constantly warmer, sunnier, and longer. Spring slowly stretches its limbs and warms itself in the sun for a few months, and the season can truly be felt and enjoyed. Without snow storms.

(Copenhagen, March 2020)