The First Sunny Day

The first sunny day in Vermont is treated like a national holiday that no one can quite believe is actually happening.

It begins subtly. A brightness at the edge of the curtains. A suspicious warmth on the kitchen floor. You approach the window the way one approaches a package on the porch that you definitely didn't order—slowly, braced for confusion.

And there it is.

The Sun.

Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Vaguely accusatory about how long you went without seeing it.

When it appears, Vermonters gaze at it with the solemn awe of medieval peasants witnessing a miracle. There will be murmurs. Possibly tears. Someone will grill something prematurely.

Within minutes, the town transforms. Neighbors emerge blinking like refugees from a soft-lit underground, dressed in what can only be described as Thermal Denial. Someone is in shorts. It is 41 degrees. That person has made a theological commitment to spring and will see it through.

You will hear grills ignite across the valley like ceremonial beacons. The smell of charcoal mingles with thawing mud and wildly misplaced confidence. A man named Carl will announce, "Feels like July," while standing beside a snowbank the size of a Volkswagen. His wife Carol says nothing, because Carol has seen this enthusiasm before and knows where it leads.

Dogs experience complete psychological collapse. They sprint in mystified circles. One Golden Retriever eats an entire stick out of pure emotional overwhelm. The mail carrier walks with the bearing of someone delivering news of a great victory.

By noon, optimism reaches genuinely concerning levels. Someone at the general store is asking about tomato seedlings. Tomato seedlings. In March. The clerk nods as though this is a reasonable question and not evidence of a cognitive break.

A man exits the hardware store with twelve bags of topsoil stacked on a dolly. He has a look of profound purpose. He will not use any of it this month. Possibly not this season. But he has made a purchase, and that is a form of covenant with the future.

A teenage girl emerges in bermuda shorts and flip-flops with declarative rubber flowers. It is 43 degrees. Her mother watches from the porch. Frostbite is an excellent teacher.

At the farm stand on Route 100, farm stand Dan Bouchard leans against his truck, watching cars pull in. He's been up since 4 a.m. Milking doesn't care about the sun.

"When will strawberries be ready?" someone asks.

"June."

"But it's so warm—"

Dan looks at her. Then at the mountains, still half-white. Then back.

"June," he says.

His wife Evelyn appears from the barn with a shovel, sees the line of cars, and stops. She looks at Dan. Dan looks back. An entire conversation happens in silence.

Someone asks about corn.

Evelyn shakes her head the way you'd shake your head at a dog that keeps trying to eat the same houseplant.

"Every year," she says to no one in particular, and goes back inside.

By 4 p.m., the hardware store has sold out of garden gloves, bird seed, and a truly alarming quantity of geraniums. People are discussing outdoor furniture. Carl is still grilling. The man in shorts has committed to the bit so thoroughly he's now wearing sandals. His feet are red. He's smiling.

The sun begins its slow descent behind the ridgeline, and the temperature does drop—enough to send people back indoors, back to woodstoves and wool socks and the layered realities of March in Vermont.

But something has shifted.

You saw it. The light. The possibility. The way even the snow looked slightly embarrassed to still be there. You stood outside for ten consecutive minutes without a coat and lived.

The tomato seedlings will wait in someone's kitchen window for eight more weeks. The topsoil will become permanent shed infrastructure. The flip-flops will be disappeared. Carl's grill will get snowed on at least twice more.

And it will not matter.

Because that one day—that single, ridiculous, 47-degree day in March where everyone collectively lost their minds and bought geraniums—that day is what gets you through mud season.

That day is what lets you believe, against all meteorological evidence and farm stand Dan's better judgment, that winter does, eventually, end.

That day is vitamin D and collective delusion and proof that Vermonters are not, as a people, particularly rational—but they are, when it counts, profoundly hopeful.

The sun will come back. Probably when you're not looking.

And when it does, you'll do this all over again.

Harris Vexley spent thirty years as a licensed real estate broker in Vermont. He is now retired, which mainly means he drives around more and talks to fewer people about it.