Nearly a decade of living in the Frozen North has changed me. Oh, probably not in any major way — I was always a commie-loving, tree-hugging liberal, after all — but there are some subtle differences, to be sure. For instance, I now see nothing wrong with eating cheese on a slice of buttered bread, something I found revolting once upon a time.

Another change, more immediately relevant, is in the way that I now define “spring.” Here there are no crocuses to herald the change of seasons, and it will likely be a month before we see green grass (and longer still before there are buds on the trees). There are mountains of snow two meters high in my front yard, and I’d be willing to stake a small fortune that we haven’t yet seen the last snowfall.

Even so, spring has undeniably made an appearance. It’s in the air, in the quality of the light, in the way that we now have more daylight hours than dark ones. It’s in the way the dogs sniff the breeze when I take them outside in the mornings and in the extra-lively cadence of the birdsong coming down from the trees. It’s in the sound of the river breaking free from its icy blanket, the moving water barely within earshot as I stand on my front porch soaking in the almost-warm rays from the bright, bright sun.

It’s there, all right. It’s just taken me a while to learn where to look for it.