Change is constant, especially in the natural world as Mother Nature stands at the roulette wheel, spinning the normalcy of seasonal change sprinkled with chance encounters of the extreme weather kind. But this winter lay dormant for the most part, never mounting much of a ground game or aerial one either — a weekend of bitter cold, a few snowstorms in rapid succession but otherwise a time of light coats and long walks on the beach nearly uninterrupted by the inconvenience of cold, snow or sleet.

Man tinkers with change too, sowing the seeds with his own footprints, but also monkeying literally with the hands of time, pulling back on the throttle for one hour each fall, and then letting loose again each spring so that hour disappears in an instant. Daylight Saving Time begins on Sunday morning at 12:01 a.m.

Here today, gone tomorrow and everyone cheers at this very visible sign that spring will soon be here to stay. Let’s face it, no one claps at a sunset occurring at 4 p.m., no matter how spectacular. But next week the sun will stick around until nearly 7 p.m. and attention will be paid, and not just for its beauty. We are a resort community, and there is work to be done.

Amidst the background chorus of pinkletinks looking for love in all the muddy places, and songbirds sounding a melodic alarm each morning, the true harbinger of spring on Martha’s Vineyard is the pneumatic thwack, thwack of nail guns and classic rock music echoing forth from job sites all across the Island .

The water is still cold and many stores still closed but already the air is filled with anticipation as the economic engine begins to rev, rising in intensity at the starting gate of spring. Signs at the moment point to positivity but nothing is a sure thing until the pedal hits the metal and the Island’s economic energy shifts from zero to sixty down the straightaway of summer.

But to backtrack a moment, wither the red-breasted merganser which like the cold and snow flew the coop this year and for the most part did not return? Warming trends shift migration patterns and as birds begin to fly north for the winter instead of south, an Island bobbing in the ocean is often the first to take notice. So too a small town community might watch an election year turn not on substance but new levels of bullying and bad manners and wonder what ever happened to civility? Politics has always taken place in muddy waters and is not for the thin skinned, but now as the planet warms the temperature of human relationships appears to be cooling off to the point of freezing.

Anger is contagious but joy and love thy neighbor can be too, be they Islander, washashore, daytripper, summer resident or political adversary. Perhaps the answer is to look to the light not the darkness. After all, come Sunday there will be an extra hour each evening.