Spring refused to wait for its month.

Not that the season truly has a month all its own in our northern climate.

Spring, I think, is unique in that respect.

Summer, it can fairly be said, belongs to July.

Rare is an October that fails to define autumn.

And January, notwithstanding an occasional thaw, almost always delivers on its promise of winter.

But spring, that most fickle of seasons, defies the calendar.

Its official beginning, of course, is with the equinox in late March.

Yet often as not, it seems to me, the season, like an old car with a balky carburetor, runs in fits and starts.

Spring teases and frustrates like no other month.

It tempts us with a taste of its essences — sunshine, soft air, a breeze heavy with the scents of damp, fecund earth and early flowers.

Then a cold front slouches in with several inches of snow, weighing the daffodils so their brilliant blooms bend to brush the ground, penitents at prayer.

And even when the sun shines it’s like as not accompanied by the spring norther, that cruel wind that stings exposed skin and causes eyes and nose alike to leak.

This sequence can happen anytime from February to June.

This year, by my account, spring arrived on the final day of February.

The previous day was fine, too, but when I went for my afternoon walk the wind, out of the southeast as it so often is in our mountain valley, bit. I was glad I had donned a second jacket.

But a day later the breeze had shed much of its speed and any hint of winter.

As I walked I welcomed the season, even though I know its treachery of old and accept the brevity of this early iteration.

The ground on the shoulders of the streets had given up its frost but was not muddy either, instead that ideal soft consistency that feels pleasant underfoot.

I saw two butterflies and was so surprised by each that I stopped for a second to watch their seemingly aimless wheeling against the blue sky.

I basked.

I always feel a trifle sad, though, when one season begins to yield to the next.

There is no snow so sad, it seems to me, as the slushy remnants that survive in the shaded strip near the north sides of buildings. I am reminded of a Christmas tree, devoid of its tinsel and its ornaments, cast into the corner of someone’s garden, its brief but wonderful purpose fulfilled forever.

But I could hardly maintain any real melancholy on such a day.

It was too fine to stroll, arms and legs moving easily through the mild air, no fears of lurking patches of ice.

When I got home I checked the weather at the Baker City Airport and saw the temperature had reached 54. It was the warmest day since Dec. 18.

But I hardly needed a thermometer to tell me that spring had come round again.

For one afternoon, anyway.