Pining for Fresh Air
Created | Updated Apr 11, 2010
Spring has come at last to North Carolina. The warm sun rises upon a verdant countryside. The bounteous blossoms that adorned the Easter landscape have languidly dropped their colourful petals to reveal a burgeoning greenness over the rolling Piedmont hills. The raucous winter crows have been shamed to silence by the melodious calls of the thrushes and mockingbirds. The brilliant carmine flash of the cardinal is glimpsed as he flits from tree to tree, and the friendly robin is building her nest. New flowers spring from the fresh-awakened earth, and everywhere nature is bountiful and lush. The vista presented to the vernal observer lacks only the American naturalist Mark Twain's solitary esophagus1 to be a vision of April perfection.
Ah, phooey. And atchoo.
This is Durham. Durham, North Carolina, home not of cathedrals but of green cathedrals, forests full of pine trees. Pine trees, which at this time of year are busy ejaculating all over the place. (I have heard them. They usually say, "Wow! Whoopee!") The resultant hymn of hate has left me and my fellow Tar Heels with Texas-sized migraines.
We are not called "Tar Heels" for nothing—tar, turpentine and timber were our earliest exports. Hearts of Oak may have been your ships, oh mother country, but sap of pine probably held the darn thing together. The pine tree has been getting its revenge ever since. We've tried being nice to it – the blasted thing makes up 34% of the state's wood volume. We've made it the state tree. What does it want, druids?
"Aha," you say smugly. "Yet another bit of whingeing from those lazy bubbas in the American South. While we endure late frosts, gale-force winds, and Easter snowstorms, you are basking in the sun over there, and moaning about the inconvenience of a little pollen." You, my friend, are clueless.
A little pollen would be a good thing. A little pollen would be...say, invisible. This pollen infestation covers most of the state in a coarse yellow powder like some unregistered 11th Plague of Egypt, probably caused by dropping the matzoh. It is everywhere.
This morning, I got up and went to the screen porch. The black cat reluctantly admitted I was boss (or at least, bigger than she is) and vacated my favourite chair. Er, did I say the black cat? How about the black-and-yellow-striped cat? She looked like an annoyed, bewhiskered bumblebee.
After breakfast, it was time to take the dog to the vet. As it was already 30 degrees (Celsius, I've given up) out there and he might be tired after his shots, we decided to drive the quarter of a mile. I got in the car and turned on the windscreen wipers – fore and aft – stirring up a fierce yellow cloud, although the blasted thing was thoroughly cleaned with Windex(TM) last night. Then I used half the window cleaner in the car's reserve before I could see well enough to proceed through the (bright yellow) parking lot. No, we haven't dyed the macadam – nature has graciously done that for us. I swear, the stuff crunched under the wheels.
This time of year, North Carolina gets up my nose. It gets up everybody's nose, which is why the local shops are so well-stocked with antihistamines. The rest of the country must wonder what we're doing with it – knowing the Yankees, they're probably convinced we've come up with some new hillbilly designer drug we're not talking about, and are cooking it back behind the double-wide. In reality, we're just trying to get a night's sleep.
This is the only place in the world where people worry about NyQuil(TM) addiction. We've found it the most efficacious remedy – it clears your head, lets you sleep, and nobody needs to tell the Baptists it's got a little alcohol in it. Around here, the doctor doesn't even blink when you ask him extra, just to be sure, if it's within the rules for you to take your NyQuil(TM) on the night before your outpatient surgery. He just smiles and says it's okay, he doesn't want you any crosser than you would be, anyway.
The yellow peril is everywhere these days – ankle-deep on the roads and walkways, ruining the recent paint job on the stairs, filtering through my porch screens and landing on everything, being tracked in by dog, cat, and man. I expect to empty my pockets before bed and find pollen. It shakes out of your shoes like sand. I think the grit between my teeth is pollen.
Lovesick trees, give it up. I mean it. Enough is enough. It took us four years to succumb to Grant. But we surrender.
I can't take another week of this. Honey, where's the NyQuil(TM)?
P.S.: This just in: A fellow Durhamite has celebrated our only good news, a long-awaited basketball victory, by scrawling "Duke #1" in the pine pollen on his back car window. The weatherman who shared this artwork with us has informed us that, as today's high was 32 degrees Celsius, we were officially allowed to say it was hot. He also brought welcome news. We can expect a relief column of cooler air and rain Thursday evening, "around supper time", and we should all leave our cars outdoors to benefit from the pollen wash.
Oh, and we are warned that it's going to get cold – Friday's high is projected at a chilly 20 degrees Celsius.
That's life in the Tar Heel State.
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