I'd been trying to find ways of describing the sunny weather, struggling to find fresh metaphors and to recreate how it felt to experience spring.  Then I remembered one hot summer's day last year when I kept cool by reading Ernest Shackleton's account of his ill-fated Antarctic expedition, South.  He used little figurative language.  He simply told the tale, and somehow that simplicity was more moving than any number of adjectives.  Without endless metaphors or descriptions of how it felt - the pain, fear and doubt - readers are allowed to imagine it for themselves.
This is one more lesson to add to the long list of things to be learned from South, one of the most powerful books I've ever read.