The winter of 2002-2003 in Ohio was a hardship for many of the populace. The temperatures were never above the freezing point and there was hardly a day that didn’t see the ground covered with snow, and each new snowfall added a few more inches to what had already been collected on the ground. Then there was the one big snowfall that occurred before President’s Day when ten inches fell within a forty-eight hour period. Everywhere one went the weather was a constant topic of conversation as well. For many, this past winter was one of longing for warmer times, but I enjoyed it. It reminded me of the winters we used to have in Ohio years ago, when they seemed colder and with more precipitation. It was also one winter without a single flu for me, which I attribute to the colder temperatures, unlike the past few winters where it might have been twenty degrees one day in early February and sixty degrees the very next day. Those last few winters seemed to be full of rampant cases of colds and influenza.

    I enjoyed the Saturday and Sunday evenings lounging around the fireplace, but unfortunately a heavy work schedule kept me from really getting out in the daytime to hike around and see what wondrous beauty the winter had brought. Still, what scenery could be seen from the roads while traveling to work each day was splendid. A snow covered ground roaming the far reaches of a cornfield, punctuated only by a bright solitary red barn. The bare limbs of all the trees sparkling when the snowfall was fresh with the light shining through an otherwise overcast sky. The tracks left in the roads from the first cars before the snowplows and salt trucks disturbed the quaint surroundings. The full moon that reflected so brightly on the snow one evening making the ground appear as if awash in the noonday sun.

    Then on the Ides of March, one week before the calendar declared the first day of spring, I knew that winter had ended. It wasn’t that smell of spring in the air, the sound of geese flying overhead, for they had been flying directly over our house for two weeks. It had nothing to do with the temperature, for I knew it was the first day of spring at eight o’clock in the morning, when it was still thirty-five degrees. There is no doubt spring was in the air on the morning of March 15th, with every bird imaginable seeming to wake up to start chorus practice. There was even frost on the ground instead of snow, and what little snow was left had retreated to the safety of fence lines and the ground layer of bushes or trees. But none of these events marked the passage of winter into spring in Germantown, Ohio for me.

    When I take my morning walks, several blocks from my home, I pass a small ranch home with a small yard. During the summers there is a man, who for reasons unknown, piles up great big stacks of wood near the front door of his house and along the back wall, which he uses to burn in a cage-like wire barrel. The wire barrel sits near the front door of the house, in the driveway in front of the garage, as there is only a small porch to the home. On the weekends from sun up to sun down he sits in a lawn chair beside that barrel. He doesn’t read a book or magazine, and the view to the street in front of him is not all that pleasant, yet there he will sit – putting several pieces of cut wood into the bottom of the barrel and watching the flames and smelling the smoke.

    On the Ides of March I noticed the house had its wood piled up and ready for the new season. But as I passed the front of his house, there he was! The man who is never seen out of the house until his "wood burning days" begins. Yes there he was and the barrel was burning large chunks of split wood, and smoke was lifting from around the top of the lid, and the flames were all around the wood, and the smell of smoke was throughout the air. And the man was smiling. He was out of his house, with his burning wood once again, sitting in his lawn chair and smiling. It was then that I knew that winter had ended.

    Yes, the winter of 2002-2003 will be remembered by many for some time, but will always be seen as a missed opportunity in my eyes, for somewhere along the snowfalls it occurred to me that this would have made an excellent short film. The film would have been a newsreel about the season. A relatively easy film to make too, because other than the one big snowfall, there was not a single incident that predominated the subject matter.

    I bring this topic up not to lament the passing fancy of an idea unused, but to suggest that a similar concept could be employed around the theme "Summer." The Summer of 2003 may hold a lot of surprises, and may make an excellent subject matter for a film. A few miles from my own town, in the city of Dayton, Ohio there will be a celebration called "Inventing Flight," the 100 year anniversary of the birthplace of aviation, and the home of Wilbur and Orville Wright. This week long event could make a film in itself, of course, but there may be many other photographic opportunities that will compete for the camera’s attention. Perhaps your town, your city, your countryside may have an interesting summer in its future, a summer to be the subject of an amateur movie, one that is to be your own interpretation of the season. It doesn’t take a catastrophic event to make a newsreel about your summer, as a glimpse of everyday people and nature can be of great interest in a short film. Of this point I will always be reminded every time I pass the strange man sitting in his lounge chair next to his burning wood.