It took three tries and some prompting but I finally got AI to produce the answer I was looking for. I asked it — if AI has preferred pronouns it’s up to artificial intelligence to let me know what they are — whether winter had an equivalent to Indian Summer. What provoked the query were the three days of seventy-degree weather that nature granted us this week.
It’s possible that my search terms weren’t precise enough. But if AI hopes to surpass human intelligence it needs to learn to read between the lines. I first asked what you’d call a spring thaw. Spring freshnet was its first answer. I’m sorry but I’m not calling anything a freshnet. That sounds like a moist towelette. In fact, my computer keeps trying to autocorrect the spelling, including suggesting the word fresnel, assuming I made a mistake and meant something else. Fresnel, by the way, is a lens designed to focus light. I had to look that up, too.
Assuming the problem was my imprecision — in certain limited circumstances I'm willing to admit error — I then asked directly whether there was a winter/spring equivalent of Indian Summer. Yes there is Google answered! I resist the temptation to anthropomorphize technology but I couldn’t help but detect a spring in its step; in the same way a first grader raises her hand and makes noises to attract the teacher’s attention so confident is the student that she has the right answer. Also, it felt as if AI knew it had disappointed me the first time and was trying to make amends.
However, my hope was misplaced. We misunderstood each other. Artificial intelligence thought I was asking about cold weather returning during early spring when I was asking the opposite. Thus, it came up with Blackberry Winter, Dogwood Winter and most dispiriting of all, Linsey-Woolsey Winter. As someone who’s been in this game a while you have to meet the reader half way; the art, such as it is, is to create a common bond, to spark recognition based on the audience’s own experience. Only then can that all-important suspension of disbelief occur.
But hating to see anything struggle, even an algorithm, I decided to lend a hand and suggest the right answer. Is false spring the equivalent of Indian Summer, I asked? “Yes,” AI answered. I could feel its relief. “A false spring is functionally the equivalent of an ‘Indian Summer,’” it went on in the same way that humans do when they try to overcompensate for their ignorance by flooding the zone with new information. Telling me stuff I already knew. Like that they occur at opposite ends of the cold season. Like duh!
Embedded in the idea of false spring is the suggestion of false hope, of disappointment. If you require evidence of how fickle humanity is, examine your own responses to dramatic, fleeting changes in the weather for the better. I was actually grateful for this winter’s hostile temperatures, the soaring price of fuel and electricity notwithstanding. In the Northeast deep snow, icicles descending from frozen gutters, and sub-zero wind chills aren’t apocalyptic. They’re reassuring. Snow drought and sullen brown fields are scarier.
When I hear WAMC’s meteorologists Paul Caiano or Garett Argianas give the daily forecast and they have to return to the 1940’s or even the nineteenth century to find a day that cold I feel a strange, comforting connection to the past; a bond to previous generations of my own family. Perhaps they’re top of mind because I’m working on a family memoir but I can visualize my mother as a young woman wrapped in furs against the New York City cold or my progenitors in 1880’s Russia. Actually, that’s a stretch. Top of mind would be those sepia-toned photographs of flummoxed New Yorkers digging out from under mountains of snow after the Blizzard of 1888.
I felt for them. Say what you will about our active assault on nature in the 21st century but we have made remarkable strides in winter wear. Down parkas and insulated waterproof boots are a marked improvement over wool coats and leather shoes. Though I wouldn’t object to bringing back hand muffs.
My question is whether false hope is better than no hope at all? I suspect it is. At a minimum the tropical thaw melted the snow that had come to resemble permafrost in our driveway. There’s probably little correlation between the weather and bird behavior. They’re not as easily deceived by false spring as we are. Yet the socializing chatter of goldfinch in our trees and the sight of them flocking our feeders suggests that something other than the light of lengthening days is informing their behavior.
My belief is that animals experience pleasure no less ardently than we do. You’ve got to give both the mighty and the meek good reason to pass their DNA down to subsequent generations. That applies no less profoundly to us. False spring is nature’s way of saying: hold that thought.
Ralph Gardner Junior is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found in the Berkshire Eagle and on Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
