Come On! You Can Do It!
Is it any wonder that shy spring flowers are timid after this winter? Even as late as Sunday they were being pelted with snow, sleet and freezing rain.
Somehow — the angle of the light, the lengthening days — the world is still preparing itself for the new season. There’s that promising pink haze at the top of the tall trees, the way buds look 80 feet away. And there are green shoots and flowers pushing up all over town. Rumor even has it that the cherry blossoms are primping for their big show.
But here on the shady side of morning, the daffodils are looking less than sure of themselves. Yesterday I bent low, snapped a few shots, and gave them a pep talk. “Come on, guys. You can do it!”
They had nothing to say for themselves; only hung their heads a little lower. But I have confidence in them. Sixty-degree temperatures are forecast again for today. It’s only a matter of time …
Snow Flowers
Spring is trying, really it is. Green shoots shove through the half-frozen earth. Maples redden with buds.
But the snow keeps falling, and the colds winds keep blowing and the temperatures keep dropping.
In Virginia and throughout much of the country, in the landscape of the body and the landscape of the soul, it’s the winter that won’t go away.
Window on Winter
When I woke yesterday I thought it would be another exercise-in-the-house day, but by mid-afternoon, I could see black pavement on my street and beyond.
Whether it was due to the relatively warm pavement temperature of mid-March or my county’s new, hard-won facility with snow removal, the roads were clear and I could walk through winter unimpeded.
This was a gift. I didn’t have to look down at my feet, dodging snow, slush or ice. I could look at trees sagging with the white stuff, at snow heaped on buds near to blossoming.
For a moment I was in an alternative universe, one stripped of color, where spring comes not in yellow, pink and purple, but in parchment, eggshell and alabaster.
It was a window on winter, before it goes away.
The Whiting of the Green
On Saturday I spotted signs of spring, snowdrops and green shoots, that pinkish haze that appears in the tree tops, proof the old oaks are coming to life.
It struck me as I strolled that I might be imagining the greening branches, the swollen buds, that maybe they were like the puddles of water that appear on a hot summer tarmac.
Because today, St. Patty’s Day, I’m not so sure. It looks like a foot of snow outside. It’s the whiting of the green. And for some reason, I welcome it.
It’s such a quiet, dutiful dousing, wet and heavy, clinging to each twig and bough. It stills me — and fills me with wonder, that such meteorlogical marvels can exist this far into the greening season.
Spring will come soon, no way it cannot. The shoots and buds are biding their time. But for now, on this day devoted to green, we have a different kind of beauty. It’s white.
March: An Appreciation
A delay in writing this morning gives me more time to think (a dangerous activity!). And what I’m thinking about is March, this in-between month. One day spring, the next day winter. Unsettling, to say the least. But also inevitable.
Weather, like so many other things, is never a smooth progression from one season to another. It’s a series of fits and starts, of warm southerly breezes challenged by Arctic fronts. Of rain that changes to snow and back to rain again. Of jackets in the morning and sweaters in the afternoon.
But don’t we need such “give,” such wiggle room, in our own lives? I’m thinking about how we acquire skills, how babies learn to walk or talk and how adults learn — well, almost anything, how to tap dance, for instance! Hard-won mastery one day, two left feet the next.
I’m trying to learn a lesson from March, to see in its intermittency a gracious acceptance of change and growth. Heaven knows I need it!
Free Hour
A free hour, from 6-7 last evening, and the trail beckoned. The sun was low in the sky and the evening was soft and warm. Cyclists whizzed by me and my legs felt heavy and tired, so I kept to the right and warmed up slowly.
Ten minutes in and I was flying. Well, not really. But it felt that way. It’s been such a long, cold winter. And to be dressed only in one layer, moving at my own pace down a path in the suburbs, seemed perfection to me then.
Maybe it was runner’s high or maybe it was spring fever — and it certainly had something to do with daylight savings time. But whatever it was, I was not alone.
Everyone I saw — from the ferociously helmeted bikers to the boxy guy padding along in thin sandals — seemed to feel the same way.
Season of Growth
Lent is late this year. Like spring, it is taking its time. But today is Ash Wednesday, so the 40 days have begun, the ecclesiastical season that prepares us for Easter with prayer, fasting and contemplation.
Somewhere along the way — it’s been a few years ago now — I learned that “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “lencten,” meaning spring. The days are lengthening. It’s harder to appreciate this when Ash Wednesday falls on February 13, as it did last year.
But this year it arrives on March 5. It’s light outside as I type these words. And I decide to approach the season with less dread and more optimism. A bit more like Advent. As a moving toward rather than a dredging down. As a season of growth rather than self-denial.
Trudging On
March has never been one of my favorite months. But this year I approach it with a fair amount of gratitude. Gratitude and wariness.
I’m grateful we’re in a month of longer days and shorter nights. Glad to see the spring birds crowd the feeder. Encouraged by the warm sun on my face, by the halfhearted witch hazel and the tentative green shoots of the daffodil.
I’m wary, too, though. March is fickle. March is proud. March likes to keep you guessing. And indeed, we frolic this weekend under threat of a winter storm Sunday night into Monday. Predictions are we’ll see our coldest temps of the winter on Tuesday morning. That’s Tuesday, March 4.
What’s a walker to do?
Pull on the coat, the gloves, the ear-warmers; find the sunniest music possible — and trudge into the wind.
Winter Musical
First, the dripping, a melodic plunking, a tune of winter’s making. Not the insect hum of summer, but slower and lower-pitched.
Inside, on the radio, the music of Mozart in honor of his birthday. Trilling clarinets, swelling strings — melodies that transcend the seasons but which take on a wintry tone today.
And finally, as noon approaches and the west wind roars into action, the sound of branches tapping against the house, of breezes sighing around corners and through branches that bend in their wake.
The sounds of late January. A winter musical.