Poets immortalize it. Soap operas dramatize it. Singers embellish its enchantments, and the lucky few live it. An intangible and elusive concept, love is transformed by the soils that give it life and the eras that contain or liberate its exuberance.

During Iowa winters, the passions necessary to fully and completely love often get buried deeply under piles of fresh and forbidding snow. Wind chills and short dark days in December cruelly strip love energy from our bodies, replacing it instead with feelings of chronic fatigue and bouts of long napping.

When levels of a brain chemical that improve mood called serotonin are low, students can get the winter blues. Scientists don’t understand why, but increased exposure to full-spectrum light increases the levels of serotonin in the brain.

During an Iowa winter, when natural light is limited, some students suffer from these winter blues properly labeled Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD in the medical community. Aptly named, SAD causes those suffering from it to feel sad. Light therapy is one treatment for the disorder. Zoloft and Prozac, both serotonin-enhancing drugs, also work to treat the symptoms of SAD.

And then comes spring! Bring on increased exposure to sunlight, rising serotonin levels, elevated human moods, but most importantly — bring back the love energy.

Springtime on the Iowa State campus is a feast of sensations. This renaissance of the landscape and its inhabitants includes pairs of robins, bunnies and squirrels busily building nests, chasing each other through trees and gardens and copulating numerous times in numerous places. Spring for many creatures is a giant incubator of warmth and sustenance. Babies with wings, paws and toes have a fighting chance for survival under its flowering umbrella.

As ISU students, we may be more covert about the romantic endeavors spring inspires, but this cycle of the four seasons is intimately connected to our bodies like a finger or toe. Our souls respond to the kiss of spring when serotonin levels in our sun-starved brains rise to new heights.

An avalanche of earthy smells, colors, songs and sunshine bury us in the season. Trees that were dull brown skeletons in January are now strutting voluptuous green foliage to please the eye. Smells of the syrupy lilac bush and the pungent pine surprise an unsuspecting nose, while cardinals and wrens startle the ear with passionate shrieks of courtship and rivalry.

Days stretch out their minutes, coaxing students to peel off layers of winter cotton, wool and down and shed the heavy burden of that SAD season. Skin, deprived of light and placed in hibernation since November, tingles when thawed by the sun’s golden heat. The taste of melting ice cream on a tongue on a hot afternoon is the culmination of a sultry spring day in Ames.

When spring overtakes the Iowa State campus like a tsunami, it brings with it waves of forgotten pleasures. This sensuality is a lot like drowning in a vat of boiling love seasoned with ample dashes of serotonin.

We may seek love out for physical gratification, intellectual pleasure, a degree in Mrs. or Mr. or a myriad of other reasons, but spring is certainly the time to find it. Let your mind and body respond to the sensual deluge of heat, light and fertility raining down from the magic spell of springtime floating over Iowa.

Caveat: If you consider yourself to be a winter person who gloats after a hard freeze and adores cross-country skiing through frozen Iowa cornfields, I applaud you. And please, tell me the secret to enjoying an Iowa winter, for it escapes me completely.