Being a writer comes with certain hard won perks. My morning commute is hardly treacherous, little more than a ten second journey from the coffee pot to my study. The snack pantry is an ever present source of comfort when the muse goes for a walkabout and gets lost. My office mates are furry canines, so office politics revolves entirely around who gets the sunbeam.
D. K. Wall:But the greatest victory, the true symbol of my liberation is my wardrobe. For years, I dressed like a corporate drone, encased daily in the stuffy uniform of the office bound, Dark suit, white shirt, a tie that felt less like an accessory and more like a gentrified leash. My shoes were polished leather torture devices.
D. K. Wall:It's clothing with no logic, offering no comfort, only a constricting band of conformity. I swore an oath to anyone who would listen that if I ever escaped, my entire wardrobe would come from an outdoor supply store.
D. K. Wall:Dear reader, I have achieved the dream. My designer label of choice is Carhartt. My life is a testament to the rugged simplicity of jeans, shorts, and a glorious rainbow of T shirts, each exactly the same as the last except for color.
D. K. Wall:Dressing requires little thought. A quick read of a thermometer, a glance at the forecast, and the clothing solution becomes obvious. When it's warm enough, shorts replace those jeans. When it's cold, I add a sweatshirt. Colder still, a coat.
D. K. Wall:It's a beautiful logical solved equation. I can even get dressed in the dark. Every shirt I own matches those tan work jeans.
D. K. Wall:This is my grand unified theory of dressing. It's foolproof. Well, for eleven months of the year. Because then there is March, the chaos agent of the calendar, the trickster god of the troposphere. March takes one look at my elegant system and just laughs.
D. K. Wall:Last Wednesday, for example, I ventured out for the afternoon dog walk in shorts and a T shirt, sweating as if I were on a tropical expedition. Bright sunshine, gentle breezes. The thermometer registered a blistering 83 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 28 degrees Celsius for my friends using that fancy metric system that we heathens here in The States refuse to embrace.
D. K. Wall:Now 83 is entirely reasonable for July. It's one of our great claims here in the Western North Carolina Mountains. Our summer days can be quite tolerable.
D. K. Wall:But a temperature like that for a day in the last dregs of official winterdom? It feels more like a bug in the planetary software. Not that we humans were complaining. The dogs, being Siberian huskies bred for ice and snow, may, however, have lodged a few formal complaints, but that was to be expected.
D. K. Wall:Less than twenty four hours after our summer day in winter, same time, same midday dog walking duties, the planet had been swapped out for a different model. A brisk 35 degrees, a winter breeze away from freezing, greeted me that high noon. The shorts and t shirt I had reached for that morning were discarded, and I scrambled into long pants and a sweatshirt.
D. K. Wall:Still March chuckled. By the end of that walk, I was sweating again. In a move of pure meteorological spite, noon was the lowest temperature of the entire day, colder than the previous midnight, colder than the one to come. The temperature ticked steadily upward with each passing step until my sweatshirt was tied uselessly around my waist.
D. K. Wall:It wasn't weather. It was a cosmic prank. Then came the weekend. March's apology tour. Crystalline blue skies lulled me into a false sense of security with highs in the seventies. The shorts and t shirt returned. I spent my Saturday evening lounging in the yard, utterly comfortable as darkness fell. No jacket required.
D. K. Wall:My faith in seasonal progression was momentarily restored. The madness had passed. Spring was imminent, which made reading Monday's forecast all the more jarring.
D. K. Wall:Let me be clear. This isn't for a week. This is for a single twenty four hour period.
D. K. Wall:It begins benevolently enough. The temperature at midnight is predicted to be a balmy 60 degrees at midnight in March. That's slightly above our average high for the March. Nice shorts weather if one is inclined to be outside in the middle of the night.
D. K. Wall:That warmth will hold until sunrise, a purely theoretical event since the sun won't be visible. The sky will be busy hosting a heavy metal concert of violent thunderstorms, gusty winds, operatic thunder, the full light show.
D. K. Wall:Even the threat of tornadoes looms, though mercifully mostly to our east. One perk of living in the mountains is that the ridges shred twisters, making us the demilitarized zone in a war between seasons.
D. K. Wall:The rain, though, will be steady, continuing to fall throughout the day. Localized flooding will occur in all of the usual spots. A wardrobe for trout fishing or even snorkeling might be more suitable.
D. K. Wall:But like a late night infomercial, March will exclaim, that's not all. Temperatures will plummet, a drop that feels personal, a deliberate act of aggression.
D. K. Wall:It will fall so far, so fast that the rain will surrender its very identity, mutating into snow. Some for us here in the valley perhaps, but mostly in the higher elevations to our West. So to recap, tornadoes to the East, snow to the West.
D. K. Wall:March has a weird sense of humor, but it always thinks of something more. In this case, the temperature keeps falling past the freezing point beyond even the twenties on its way to a final insulting destination in the teens. That's a bone chilling negative eight degrees Celsius for those keeping score in the metric world.
D. K. Wall:How do you dress for a day like that? My grand unified theory of dressing offers no solution. There is no chapter for a day that contains spring, summer, autumn, and winter within its bounds.
D. K. Wall:Do I leave the house in a wet suit with a parka over it? Snow pants on one leg and swim trunks on the other. Should I just wear everything I own and waddle through the day as a sentient laundry pile?
D. K. Wall:Oh, sure. You might suggest a passable set of pajamas and remaining indoors for the day. I do, after all, work from home with no one to judge my wardrobe choices.
D. K. Wall:Except, of course, for my canine companions. They will watch me stare into my closet with the haunted look of a man who has gazed into the abyss. They won't see the meteorological chaos, the existential wardrobe crisis.
D. K. Wall:They will think of only one thing. They will stare at the leash, then at me, then out the window, hoping for a break in the rain. And should one occur, their eyes will ask the only question that truly matters to them. Are we going out or what?
D. K. Wall:I can only hope I'm dressed appropriately for whatever happens.