Spring arrives not all at once, but like a deep breath held too long finally being released. In the South, it starts early—February, sometimes January—when the camellias in Charleston still hold pink fists of bloom, and the air smells of wet earth and barbecue smoke. By March, the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., draw crowds like a religious pilgrimage. Pink and white petals drift into the Tidal Basin, blurring the line between water and sky.
The Northeast gets its picture-postcard snow: Vermont ski resorts, Central Park blanketed in white, Boston’s brownstones with smoke curling from chimneys. But also the grind—shoveling sidewalks, delayed trains, the gray slush by March that makes everyone forget why they ever liked snow.
And in the Northeast, spring is a stubborn negotiation. Snowdrops push through old snow. One day you wear a T-shirt; the next, you’re scraping frost off your windshield. But then, suddenly, the maples bud, the Red Sox open at Fenway, and everyone walks a little slower, just to feel the sun on their faces.
What makes the seasons in the USA truly a story is the way they overlap and transform. On a single November day, you can have snow in Montana, 70 degrees in Texas, and autumn rain in Oregon. You can celebrate Mardi Gras in Louisiana while ice fishers drill holes in Maine. You can watch the sun set over the Pacific in California and know that somewhere, in a small town in Pennsylvania, the first firefly of summer has just blinked.