It's 9:00 a.m., the middle of December, but the quality of the light and the length of the shadows stretching across the lawn remind me of an early morning in summer. Or maybe it is something else disorienting my sense of season. Something my body knows but my mind doesn't register. It isn't warm enough even for a cool summer dawn, and the trees are leafless except for a few copper beeches.

This happens to me occassionally. My feeling that the day or hour I'm living has been lifted from another time of the year. Probably I pay too much attention to the weather.

These brief spells of dislocated time can be exhilerating. When I was a kid there ws always that thaw in January when my friends and I would break out the bats and gloves and knock baseballs into the snow lingering at the edge of the woods. The mid-winter bit of summer was a late Christmas present.

Then there are days in mid-summer when the air cools and the high, blue sky is suddenly an autumn sky.

Living in the same area my whole life, I've become used to the progression of the seasons. Any deviation from the usual is disturbing and exhilerating. Winter has held off this year. We're still waiting to be snowed in. Maybe that's what's upset my time sense.