My flight this morn­ing took an unusual approach into Logan, first fly­ing directly over the air­port, past the inner har­bor, and deep into the south­ern ‘burbs (Ded­ham?) before turn­ing 180 degrees and land­ing on 04R. The clear, sunny sky and the strange route pro­vided two excel­lent views of my favorite city.

The tem­per­a­ture may have only reached 55, but from what I saw of Boston today, the col­lec­tive atti­tude might have been “Spring is here, dammit, and we’re going to enjoy it.”

Run­ning along the Esplanade just a month or two ago, I would encounter per­haps a dozen other peo­ple (includ­ing the home­less). But today there were hun­dreds. Not just run­ners and cyclists, either, but also walk­ers, rollerbladers, pic­nick­ers and fish­ers. There were col­le­giate fris­bee games, kids play­ing catch, a pet dog swim­ming in the river, sail­boats pulled up along­side the piers, cou­ples cud­dled annoy­ingly on blan­kets, stu­dents read­ing books, artists mak­ing sketches, writ­ers mak­ing notes, and sun-bathers try­ing not to look cold.

Spring is never much of a sur­prise, but it’s always excit­ing anyway.