The Signs of Spring Abound, Unless You're South of the Border

Transcript

INTRO: Every spring in western Pennsylvania, the snow melts and the world comes back to life. This is old news to us, but in other parts of the world, spring simply does not exist. Commentator Kayla Hunter reflects on a different rhythm of life in the tropics.

HUNTER:
Around this time every year, I get antsy and wear jackets that are too light for the weather. I remember how fresh balmy air can smell. I even look forward to light, cleansing rains. As the earth sheds its wintry layers, I do too. The day I can walk outside and squeeze the wet grass between my toes, I know spring is finally here.

In the upper reaches of North America, every March the grip of cold subsides and life begins anew. What was once barren, now blooms. To me, this cycle was just the way things were.

Then, last May I went to Nicaragua, smack dab in tropical Central America. There they have two seasons: winter and summer, but they are not winter and summer as we know them. Rather, they are more like wet and hot, and dry and hotter. The temperature rarely dips below 70 degrees, and the averages are in the 80s or 90s. It's the type of weather that allows a nice Nicaraguan man to grown a coconut tree in his backyard, and then to give half a fresh coconut a day to the clueless American girl staying next door.

I lived in Nicaragua for six weeks with a host family in Leon, one of the hottest cities in the country. Most of my first week there, I lay in a puddle on a wicker bench, watching the wobbly ceiling fan stir up the heavy, dusty air. My host family watched me and giggled.

When I told them that I was born in the mountains in Colorado, they nodded knowingly. Ahh, la nieve. The snow, they said. They asked what it was like, having never seen it themselves. After a brief pause, I said it was powdery, sort of like shaved ice. But finer. I couldn't think of a better description in my limited Spanish. They nodded, as if they understood, but I knew they couldn't have any idea. None of them had ever really felt true cold.

A few weeks later, near the end of May, I got to experience Nicaragua's initiation into its winter: a pounding downpour that lasted for four days. The galoshes and umbrellas that got me through spring rains at home were not going to help me here. Yards turned into pools and roads became rivers. Water dripped through the roof and seeped through open windows and doors. The temperature dropped to 70 degrees. My host family shivered.

But then the rain stopped, and within less than a week, everything dried up. The sun resumed its shining, and I resumed my sweating. It was as if nothing had happened.

As everybody back home in Pittsburgh was riding the tail-end of spring, getting amped for impending barbecues and bikinis, I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in perpetual summer. I love Nicaragua's raw beauty, but tropical life felt more to me like a skipping record than the rhythmic cycle I know and love here. The start of each new season refreshes me, and none more so than the rebirth of spring.

OUTRO: Kayla Hunter is a senior at the University of Pittsburgh, who has another reason to love spring's arrival. This May, she's set to graduate.