3.11.15 Here, it is 48 degrees. No Coat. Grass visible. Fat awake chipmunks.

     Spring arriving is so like a neighborhood after a rough summer’s storm, everyone coming outside to check on homes, each other.

     Here, it is 48 degrees. The first day of no coat, of seeing grass and soil. Of a chipmunk awake, rather nicely round, perched on a Mountain Laurel, basking in the sun as they clean their fur. Of the adolescent Broadwing hawk, who managed their first hard winter, and flew off from a nearby tree when I came outside to just stand, face in the warm sun.

     

     Last night, the land was cold and the air warm, so all about us, in the darkness, swirled a mist that remains today, roiling down the  ice and snow covered river.

      Today the shepherd sits outside in the bright march sunlight, eating snow, watching and listening, contentedly at home.

     And outside, we encounter one sign of encroaching spring, after another.

     Of buds and some visible perennials and birds really going quite nutso, with their wooing and mating.  Of tenants leaving and arriving. Birch catkins shining in the morning sun. Almost time to pack up scarves and boots and hats and gloves , though we should not be too hasty. Once when my daughter was young, she had her May birthday. It snowed. She cried. Nothing would console her. Ah, New England.

     Full daylight, with the half moon sky. A reprieve, the spring is, in the lands of seasons.  

3.11.15 Heels and Wounds

8

I do. Love how time heals all wounds and wounds all heels.

3.11.15 We Slowly Learn To Keep On Saying Yes

Quite often, we spend some early years zoom zooming about. Aspiring to so much. Interested and curious about so much. Perhaps wanting to accomplish so much. If we have offspring, wanting to provide so very much, for a rich stable foundation.

Just as often, we get taken out at the knees. Surprise.

And then we see what is possible.

Things change; they change again.

We slowly learn to keep on saying yes.

3.11.15 Perhaps it was because the light cut across the land in that inimitable way

     Somehow when wakening this morning, turning and looking out the windows, the light had shifted, and the season changed again.

    It wasn’t just that the sky was no longer in it’s heavy grey overcast mode.

     Nor was it that there was an absence of snowflakes thickening the air.

     It wasn’t necessarily because the air was much warmer, nor that, all night long, the land had been cold and the air warm, so mist swirled down ravines and across thawing meadows, along to the river below.

     Perhaps it was because the light cut across the land in that inimitable way that spring begins to flow into all things.

     The light that entered our bedroom windows early in the morning, and awakened our pineal glands, signaling a change in sight.

     That light is calling out to the Maples and the Pine, the weasels and the coywolves, the hawks and the humans and the worms, as the maple run begins, buckets slung along the aged town trees.

     The river remembers it’s times without snow and ice blanketing, and the proximity of the sun summons all thing to begin their time of growth.

3.10.15 Yeah, well, I forgot; and there I was, up at 6, facing the brilliant skies

q

You know how you do that thing, of saying to yourself, out loud at bedtime, that you're going to sleep until...a certain time? 

And your subconscious often listens, and you are subdued beneath a deep sleep and a long one? 

Yeah, well, I forgot last night and with all the human messing-with-time stuff, there I was at 6 am, up and facing the brilliant skies.