Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

I’m sitting in my son Kevin’s living room in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting for the sun to come out, even though it’s hopeless. The sun doesn’t come out in Fargo very often this time of year. Rather, the days stretch gloomy and endless, each one running into the other, separated only by shades of grey to black. You need a clock to know what time it really is

I visit Kevin every spring, usually in March, although sometimes in April. Each trip I’ve noticed how grey it is, and it makes me believe you must be hardy to live here. Winters are legendary for their coldness; Kevin once called to tell me it was 34 below, and he wasn’t discussing the wind chill factor. Fargo is the only place I’ve ever been that has little heating plugs attached to the parking meters.

But winter is only half of it. You still have to endure the slow emergence of spring. It’s as if the whole town were slowly coming out of a frost-induced coma. Where I live you wake up one morning and spring is clearly in the air; you can smell it, you can see it. It’s the difference of a day, rather than weeks. Fargo is the opposite.

I know spring eventually arrives there, but probably not until Memorial Day, long after my early spring visits. I visited Fargo once in summer, and I must admit it was glorious. The sun actually shone and I didn’t see a single resident wearing a parka.