“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last week, as I walked through the Boston Public Garden, I was struck by a familiar but still startling realization: spring is a traveler, but she doesn’t move quite how we expect.
A Late Surprise in Boston
When I left Utah, the tulips were already tired—their bright flags beginning to curl at the edges, a weary army ready for retreat. But when I arrived in Boston, nearly at sea level, I was surprised to find the first tulip buds only just unfurling, like a symphony tuning its first notes.
At first glance, this felt backwards. Isn’t it colder at higher altitudes? Doesn’t the thin mountain air delay everything green and living? Shouldn’t spring arrive later in Utah’s mile-high towns than at damp sea level in Massachusetts?
Common sense would seem to nod: of course. And yet, the earth humbles common sense again and again, offering a quieter, deeper logic.
Latitude, Not Just Altitude
Boston may sit slightly farther north than Provo, but spring shows up later there—not because of geography alone, but because of how places hold or release heat. Boston’s coastal climate holds tight to winter, the ocean acting like a giant cold pack. The saturated ground stays chilly longer, and the warming sun has to work harder to coax life upward. Meanwhile, Utah, boxed in by dry desert and reflective mountain slopes, shakes winter off like a wet dog. Heat builds fast and deep. In Boston, seasons seep slowly across the landscape. In Utah, they crash like a wave.
Spring Rush or Spring Stroll
In the mountains, spring often rushes in with urgency once conditions tip just past freezing—like a dammed-up river finally breaking loose. Plants, animals, even the soil itself seem to know they must hurry. There’s a shorter growing season at altitude, a compressed window in which to flower, fruit, and seed before the cold returns. It’s a biological sprint, not a slow unfolding. Meanwhile, lower latitudes, even those at sea level, can afford a leisurely stretch. Spring doesn’t have to hurry.
It’s a bit like baking bread: at sea level, yeast rises steadily, predictably. At 7,000 feet, the rules change. Less air pressure, cooler temperatures, and drier air reshape the process. Similarly, each landscape lives by its own ancient contract—with the sun, the soil, and the clock. Springtime, it turns out, is not a matter of altitude alone, but of latitude, climate, and urgency. And yet, even that logic gets flipped on its head when you look at the bigger picture.
Altitude, Not Latitude
As we move from winter to summer, Earth actually drifts over 3 million miles farther from the sun—deflating the old idea that being closer makes it warmer. (We explored this in “Endless Summer”, where tilt, not distance, rules the seasons.) So much for grade-school logic—and speaking of grade school, I still remember being forced to sing, “When it’s springtime in the Rockies.” The lyrics promise, “I’ll be coming back to you,” but let’s be honest—spring clearly makes its own plans and doesn’t consult your elevation.
Maybe it’s no accident that latitude and altitude differ by just two letters. They sound alike, they look alike—and yet they shape the seasons so differently. One tilts you toward longer light; the other shoves you into colder nights. One place stretches into spring with a slow, humid sigh; another vaults forward, racing the short mountain summer before winter muscles its way back in. Small differences, big outcomes—just like spring itself.
Lessons from a Tilted World
Life offers many parallels. In relationships, in work, even in personal growth, we often assume that speed equates to progress. We expect change to move in linear, predictable ways: higher should mean colder; lower should mean warmer. Closer should mean sooner. But growth—whether of flowers, or friendships, or faith—moves according to deeper laws, less visible but more real. Sometimes, what looks like a delay is simply a different rhythm. Sometimes, blossoming takes time where we least expect it, and urgency erupts where we thought there would be calm.
Spring, like life itself, reminds us that the pace of unfolding is not always tied to what we can immediately see. It is tethered to older, wiser currents: to the spin of a tilted planet, the memory stored in a tulip bulb, and the silent agreements between sun, soil, and seed.
Back in Boston, as I wandered the city’s streets, watching the tender green haze blur the edges of the trees, I thought of home. By the time I returned, Utah’s tulips had already yielded to lilacs, and the first bold roses were threading their way into the garden’s tapestry. A few days later, I stood again in the Wasatch foothills, where yellow balsamroot and other wildflowers flared across the hillsides—confident, sun-chasing things that don’t ask permission to bloom. Yet another way spring was fully unpacking her bags.
Spring, it seems, had hurried on without me. But I carried its lesson anyway: that beauty, like belief, often blooms in ways and places that defy our simple maps.
The real wonder isn’t that spring comes at different times—but how reliably unpredictable it is. We count on it every year, and yet it never arrives in quite the same way.
Spring’s rhythm often outpaces our own—but no matter the delays or detours, the world keeps tilting faithfully toward light.
