“Do you ever think, this time of year, that spring is never going to come?”

“Yes,” I said.

We have had day after day of deep cloud cover and snow. Then, yesterday, following a heavy snowfall, the sky cleared and the sun just took over, melting the huge stalactite icicles on the eaves. What’s going on? I thought.

The fact is, while we may not notice it, we are working up to mud season, and, eventually, spring. In many parts of the United States — South Carolina or Florida, where many of your neighbors are right now for example — it really will be spring, but here it will just be meteorological spring, which is different.

The moon will be full or nearly full this week, but we’ll be lucky to get a glimpse of it in all its glory between the clouds. The weather forecast calls for cold, snowy nights and cloudy days just on the verge of thaw here in the valley, continuing for some time.

This is all to the good, though, because when daytime temperatures rise above freezing and nighttime temperatures fall below 32 degrees, the maple sap begins to flow.

I’ve already seen some robins, and the first flocks of red winged blackbirds, along with their starling and cowbird traveling companions, are due any day now. Black bears begin to emerge from their winter dens around the time of the vernal equinox, which falls on Monday, March 20.

On the equinox, the sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west. Days and nights are equal. Following the equinox, the sun will rise higher and higher every day until June 21, the summer solstice, when it reaches its highest point in the sky. Then as the sun travels across the heavens it starts getting lower again.

At the autumnal equinox Sept. 23, days and nights are once again equal; then on to the winter solstice on Dec. 21. (I know! I know! People say that the sun doesn’t travel at all, that instead the earth travels around the sun, but don’t think about that now, it will only confuse you.)

My mother told me when I was young that only at the vernal equinox is it possible to stand raw eggs on end so they stay put. This, of course, seemed to me to be a worthwhile endeavor, as opposed to other things I could be doing, so, in the name of science, every year at this time I worked at standing eggs up on the kitchen counter.

I found it to be pretty difficult. Still, I recall sensing a moment when I could feel the pull of Earth’s gravity changing, a magical suspension as winter gave way to spring, when tides and planets and Easter eggs and human hearts were all in flux!

If you want to try it, save the date: Monday, March 20 at 5:24 p.m. is the exact moment of this year’s vernal equinox.

Helpful hints: Shaking the egg may aid in settling it, and sprinkling salt on the counter helps, too. You cleverly center the egg on the salt crystals, then gently blow away the excess from around its base, and there you have it.

Even at that, it’s an exercise in patience.

The autumnal equinox, by the way, the first official day of fall, is very similar to the vernal equinox in that days and nights are equal, but no one ever says that you can balance eggs on end at this juncture. I don’t know why.

Then, one year on the vernal equinox, some so-called expert on television proclaimed the seasonal egg standing feat to be an urban myth, what we now would call an alternative fact. At these words, a dozen eggs immediately fell over and went rolling off the kitchen counter smash onto the floor. It was a horrible moment.

I have since heard that the tradition comes from a Chinese story that on Lichun, the first day of spring, raw eggs can be stood on end. But Lichun does not fall on the vernal equinox, so there goes all of the science out the window.

I tell you this now in order to debunk the story early so that you don’t stock up on extra eggs, which are very expensive this year.

Happy mud season, and have a good week.

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(Martha Allen lives in Keene Valley. She has been writing for the News for more than 20 years.)