Browsed by
Category: seasons

March: An Appreciation

March: An Appreciation

Comments 0 Comment

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

Free Hour

Comments 0 Comment

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

Season of Growth

Comments 0 Comment

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

Trudging On

Comments 0 Comment

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

Winter Musical

Comments 0 Comment

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.

Warm in the Morning

Warm in the Morning

Comments 0 Comment

The temperature this morning is 37 degrees, the warmest it’s been in a week. It’s all downhill from here. Tonight a wave of arctic air rolls into town just in time for another frigid Tuesday morning.

But today is a better story. Today reverses the normal winter order of things: It will be warm in the morning, colder later on. That’s a relative “warm,” you understand. Two layers instead of three. A run at 9 instead of noon.

Still, today’s thaw is a reminder that we will not always have winter, that the ground will soften and slender green shoots will emerge.

Even thinking about this sends my internal temperature up a couple of degrees!

Moon through Trees

Moon through Trees

Comments 0 Comment

This week’s warming pattern has brought us back to November: The air is raw but not frigid; the trees are bare but not icy.

We’ve not yet crossed the boundary where a warming trend feels like spring. Instead, it feels like fall with all of winter yet to come.

Last evening, stepping out of the car to get the mail, I paused as I turned when I spotted this moon. It was a Halloween moon that was late to the party. I looked for the witch on her broomstick. I saw instead today’s clouds moving in on a freshening wind, and a blur of light both wan and enigmatic.

Getting the Tree

Getting the Tree

Comments 2 comments

We’re several weeks ahead of schedule, but the girls were here and the weather was fair, so yesterday we drove  to Snicker’s Gap to cut our Christmas tree. After Leesburg, foothills appear on the horizon and the road curves up to meet them. Soon after that, I spot the familiar hillside, parceled in fir and pine.

I breathed in the evergreen scent, took in the scene, livelier than usual this busy weekend. As with any annual tradition, I was measuring, calculating, thinking about where we are now compared with this time last year. A better place, I decide, shoulders relaxing as we trudge up the hill.

The trees are healthy and plentiful, and there is variety in each plot. Old trees and young trees, tall and short — giant blue spruce and scraggly pine seedlings — all share the same southern slope. As I watch the girls stride ahead I realize they aren’t the only ones who’ve grown up. The trees being cut today were babies when we first came here.

We have lived through an entire Christmas tree life-cycle: 10 years of rain and sun and wind and snow. Ten years of growing pains, of hour-long car trips here, some coerced, some not.

And still we return to saw the trunk and topple the tree; to drag it, lash it and bring it home. We drive west to seek the southern slope. We mark the years as best we can.

Color, Still

Color, Still

Comments 0 Comment

Most of the time, nature is kind. It gives us something to hang onto. In this case, fall color. Not all of it goes at once. Even yesterday’s wind gusts left a few tenacious leaves on the trees.

This gives the eye something horizontal on which to gaze, a relief from the unremitting verticality of winter’s bare trunks.

Is it just my imagination, or are the final colors more vivid, more alive?

The Other Side of the Moon

The Other Side of the Moon

Comments 0 Comment

The first cold of the season blew in yesterday. I’m not talking about frost on the pumpkin or a nip in the air. This cold meant business. Low 20s with the meteorologists already mentioning wind chill. There was even snow in the forecast for Tuesday.

I’m never ready for this, always find it an affront. What happened to balmy nights, crickets chirping, bats flitting high up, above the tree line? What happened to heat?

Truth be told, it may be with us again by next week! That’s the way our weather goes these days. But even if it warms up tomorrow, it’s too late now. The cold has happened. The gloves are on.

Cold weather is the other side of the moon. Every year a mystery; every year a drag.

(No snow yet, but it’s only a matter of time!)