Waves of cold, frigid air come down off of the mountains to the east, and the wind moves through the forest in a rolling roar, the trees swaying and their leaves shaking, and then the rains come down hard and sudden and then abate, and the clouds disperse to the west and the sun shines through, strikingly and suddenly warm, baking the edge of the forest where the clearcut begins, where steam rises from the fresh rainfall vaporizing, which has barely had time to soak in.
Too much difference meeting difference too quickly, but it carries on with a beauty of its own. Flocks of opportunistic birds burst forth, and the trees let out their pollen, everyone trying to ride the wave of an earlier and earlier spring, cut through the middle by a wobbly jetstream. The hot and cold oscillating like the rapid turnover of a strobe.
This growing wilderness at this particular phase of the seasonal cycle is an environment for the pioneer, bursting forth to spread its seed and grow rapidly where it has the window. You get a lot of interesting things happening in these transitional zones, where large forces have to move and shift their course, such as a deep seasonal shift from dormant to active modalities of living, or in the case of the political sphere, a presidential election, in which a changing of the guard takes place.
