It’s now the equinox. Today, 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Tomorrow the balance will be tipped in favor of daylight. I say, bring it on. I am so ready for this. I also like it that the increase/decrease is mathematical. It is a constant, and a good one, something you can set your metaphorical watch by.

There is indeed more daylight. And the sunlight is now more intense. I found myself thinking this morning, as I was walking Tinni, that the sun does not shine this brightly in the winter.

One sign of spring is that the horses shed their winter coats. I’ve heard said that this is a light and not a heat dependent occurrence. Tinni is always the first to let go of the accumulated hair, dander, and dirt. Signy, Raudi, and Siggi follow. Hrimmi has a pelt. I think she’ll move up in the shedding lineup. It means more work for me, but its work I enjoy. Just so long as there is heat in that sun.

It doesn’t seem to me to be getting all that much warmer. The ice on the road is not melting. The road grader dude made grooves in the ice and laid pea gravel on top of the grooves. What a joke – this did not change anything. I took Tinni and the goats for a walk and then called it good. Too slippery to risk having the others hurt themselves. So after, I did groundwork with the remaining four.

There are no absolutes about breakup. We didn’t get much snow this winter. And it was a wet fall. So it may be messy. Mud – I can deal. Ice—I cannot deal.

Another sign of spring is the urge to clean what I call the fouled nest. The other day I got a new filing cabinet. I’ve begun organizing the stuff that I’m putting into it. It’s a slow, laborious process. The filing cabinet fits nicely into the space next to my desk. I was going to take a photo of it for this dispatch, but decided not to. It’s a very nice filing cabinet, but really, there is absolutely nothing that sets it apart from other filing cabinets except for the fact that it’s my filing cabinet. And really, that doesn’t merit my posting a photo -- unless I think of some wildly creative and innovative way of taking it.

And yet another sign of spring is that my thoughts turn in the direction of the upcoming riding season. My friend Heather said she’d like to bring her horse Rio to our place for a ride. Heather’s been wanting to do this for a long, long time, like for about eight years. It’s just taken a while for him and her to become the team they now are. I’ve been thinking that I’d like to pony him off Signy. I’d like to see how she does with a

non-Icelandic. Right now, I don’t think she thinks any such thing exists. She hasn’t been around a big horse in some time. And Trillium, age 10, is waiting on getting her new Icelandic. I’ll be riding with her. And Kaylene Johnson said she wants to go riding.

And still yet another sign of spring is that ice sculptures in Fairbanks are beginning to melt. It’s remarkable what these carvers, who are internationally known, do. They create these incredible masterpieces well knowing that they’ll eventually turn to water. All that will be left are two-dimensional photos. The ones here were taken by my friends Sarah and Fran Buntzen. I figured that they would be far more interesting to look at than ones of my filing cabinet.

Next: 81. 3/23/13: Late Winter or Early Spring Storm?