Daylight Savings for What?

Daylight Savings for What?

Are you happy that it is daylight savings time now? I am never sure this early in the year. At the moment, there is nothing the additional hour of light is making possible for me outside. The porch furniture is down below under a plastic tarp, the pond is frozen solid, and the snow is piled  high along the driveway. I have grown used to an earlier dinner and reading books by the wood stove as dusk settles over the land. The extra daylight is making me nervous, as if I am squandering it being inside. At the other end, it is dark again at six in the morning and I am lingering in bed!

I might feel differently down south. I might feel differently about March overall, which occupies such a dreary spot in the year north of the Massachusetts Turnpike. South of the Pike, March heralds spring blossoms, which I will accept are worthy of extra daylight when they finally arrive. But here, we get to look upon the persistence of winter and transition to mud season. For us, it would make more sense to set the clocks back another hour, until April, allocating the extra sunlight to where it would do the most good, at the bus stop, and sparing us the sight of a season growing old and damp. The poetry of our spring has less to do with flowers opening than snakes shedding skin. We molt. The sensible thing to do is hide.

Of course, I am not a skier. For many of them, March represents a premium opportunity to hit the slopes shorn of the extra outwear, which must feel liberating. Therefore, yes, if it is going to be warmer skiing let it also be sunnier. The equation balances in a way that watching our backyard emerge from its winter hibernation covered in soggy debris does not. Wait until the grass greens up, then switch on the lights.

Which is how it was until 2007, as you know. Beginning in 1966, clocks did not spring ahead until the last Sunday of April. In 1987, Congress adjusted it to the first Sunday in April. But in 2007 they did what they have done to us today (in a burst of government efficiency), adding an extra hour of daylight to a time of year that, with few exceptions, results in no tangible benefit.

I was a New York City commuter for years, mainly to either northern Fairfield or Westchester counties. I like the country, which is why I live here. I was willing to ride the train for an hour and a half getting to and from my mid-town offices. For much of the winter, it would be dark when I left for work and dark when I got home. One mid-winter Saturday, a friend showed-up at the house while we were having breakfast.

“Nice tree on top of the garage,” he said. We trooped outside. It was a large limb, not a tree, but a portion had pierced the roof in a far corner.

My wife at the time, with her mind on our newborn daughter, had failed to mention it. It being dark at my comings and goings, I had failed to see it. We had a detached garage with a light, but who wants to use the light on a cold morning when it means having to leave the car to turn it off after backing out. Better to fumble in and out.

The limb had been there for the week. I cannot tell you if it was early March, but I can tell you I was worry free for the duration. Ignorance was bliss. Nothing could have been done in the meantime unless by someone else, and those were not the days of affording someone else. My friend and I spent a jovial morning climbing around the roof, removing the limb, and applying a temporary patch to the hole. I think we were all together again that night for dinner. We usually were and had the episode to celebrate.

An extra hour of daylight would have wrecked the whole thing. Including the chance to tell you about it today.

Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, March 7, 2025