The Torrent of Spring - NYTimes.com Spring is the torrential season. On a bright, blue-skied day in April or May, it can feel as if you're standing in a river of biological change, whether you're in Central Park or out in the country. Everything seems to be regenerating - every species of plant, animal and insect - all of them cued to the new light and the new warmth. It's as though we're living in three kinds of time at once: geological time, which is too slow for us to grasp, human time, which is just right, and tulip time, which comes and goes in the blink of an eye. In all this change, we are the unchanging species. We don't become vernal with new growth. We don't blossom, nor do we contribute to the clouds of pollen that drift through the air. We don't shed or nest or den. We are not the green men (and green women) of myth, vegetative humans who live by the cycle of the seasons. We go about our business and our pleasure. Perhaps, about now, the palette of our clothing shifts toward the pale and pastel. To all the beings that are rioting around us, we must seem like a remarkably stodgy species. New Yorkers like to think of ourselves as 24/7. In fact, as a species we are even busier - and certainly never dormant. But there is also a constancy to us. In the dark of winter and the light of summer, we remain more or less as we always are, a constancy so characteristic of our species that we don't even notice it. It is useful. It is productive. But just once it would be nice to be budding out, breaking into leaf, bursting into blossom as the warmth of May approaches.