Clearwater Season

Spring and All, but in the 70's

We’ve just passed into March, and we’ve already officially entered “Clearwater Season” here in Cambridge. Clearwater Season is that time of year when winter is blown away by sweet springtime breezes. Breezes that carry the illustrious promise of tomorrow: sun-kissed skin, skies of blue, barbecues, time spent by the river, time spent by the lake, time spent by a body of water, and Creedence Clearwater Revival playing in the background.

Clearwater Season is that time of the year when you can pretend it’s still the 1970s. You can have thoughts like “God, isn’t it beautiful? Beautiful! Our beloved Gerald Ford is president! Why don’t we just call it a day at work early, and go day drink on the beach?!” When it’s Clearwater Season, you can still do that. You can drink on your lunch break or crack a Miller in the park! Lay with your head in the grass and whistle along to “Proud Mary.” You’re not a drunk or now unemployed— you’re in the 70s! Everyone was drunk in the 70’s. They had to be, because how else was a nation meant to cope with the upcoming Carter administration (just a little Republican humor for my readers down south. Yee-haw, and all that.).

There is truly nothing better than sitting in a chair, outside, on the first sunny day of spring. Where it’s warm rays kiss the skin like honey. The wind is a comforting friend. Present and relaxing, not chilling at all. It’s when you’ve got your New Yorker in one hand, and even though you’re reading, you still throw on “Green River.” You just give in to the beauty of the day and let the mellow rock take you. In that brief moment, it really is the year 1970-something. You feel its comfort in every pore that the sun has kissed. The comfort of knowing that the Shah is in power, and he always will be. The comfort of knowing that gas is cheap, and it always will be. The spring day that just seems to sing out, “I have never seen the rain, and it will not come down on this sunny day.”

Clearwater Season is the time when you wake up and want to go for a run! You couldn’t run, enjoy the outdoors all winter, because of the salt on the road, the snow on the road, the sand on the road— there was just too much on the road to make physical outdoor activity safe or interesting. As that first sun of spring, the beginning of Clearwater Season, approaches, you just wake up bathed in that new era of morning light, where you can’t help but throw on your early morning running shoes and hit the bricks! There’s nothing like finally being able to go out in just a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and just get to jogging, not cold at all. “Up Around The Bend” plays in your earbuds, and you can feel, as your feet touch the ground, the way the spring season propels you forward. As you run and run, you can see the place up ahead you’re going—Fort Dix, NJ. Once again, it’s the 70’s, and you can feel the promise of a war about to be easily won. This casual morning jog turns into basic training with you and your buddies. It’s Clearwater Season, and you just know that Nixon is the man for the job.

Clearwater Season is the time of the year when any day can be made better, tremendously so, if only you were listening to “Cosmo’s Factory.” Some things were just better back in the day, and for some reason, spring brings those feelings out in me. It was a simpler time, where the youth would run freely and weren’t glued to, and afraid of, their screens. Life seemed simpler; it seemed more fun. Life was more prone to fits of youthful spur-of-the-moment happenings. Where you and your young pals drink bottles of whole milk… in the back of someone’s VW bus, and you’re headed to uh, to a lake someplace, and you do things like have random lake parties— and there are girls there, the second wave kind! But I’ve seen “Midnight in Paris,” and I know this isn’t true.

The 70’s weren’t better than today; it’s always a good time to be young and healthy. So, I would like to treat Clearwater Season as a call to action, rather than a wistful, perverse reminder of days long gone and never experienced.

I used to ignore the wartime rock that’s found in the air of spring. I used to stay indoors, comforted by the joys of modernity: Air cooling and heating, the plethora of video content that makes it seem as if a true facsimile of life can be lived online, and the physical comfort of not being physical at all. I eventually got lucky and wise. I began to realise that today leaves as fast as it approaches.

When you see that first sun, grab it even if it’s just for a moment! To rage against the days of indolence. That is when you hear the wind whistling and the birds chirping, to put down your phone and instead pick up your baby, and swing her around in the grass somewhere. It’s something that Im trying to get better at. In seizing the day, Alice is very light, and swinging her is easy. Whatever you decide, when spring comes around to you—listen to “Who’ll Stop The Rain” while you’re doing it.