Spring? Are you here?

Seems like there is always that one weekend in the fall where it rains and make the forest floor wet. And it seems like it really stays damp for the next five months. I always noticed it. Then there always seems to be that one day in the spring where the sun peaks through and the warm air swells, getting your hopes up about the coming change.

Deep down, you know you aren’t done with the cold just yet. But for some reason you can’t keep the hope from rising. That’s the wonderful power of Spring and its accompanying theme of renewal. It’s the metaphor of life, and it is beyond suppression.

I had just such reflections a couple of years ago, sitting around an early spring campsite:

Darkness ambled its way over the hilltops and into the deep valleys, vanquishing the day’s bold temperatures as only the cold of a spring night can. The same woods that burst with sound and life during the day, drift off early to bed. The quiet of the night is thick and it quickly envelops the field where we camp. If the spring’s days are being wooed by the coming summer, then its nights still reside firmly in winter’s possession.

The cold that accompanies the dark seems to sting more as well, as if the warm sun with its brief daytime reprieve has charmed the body into dropping its natural defenses. To fight back against the chill, we huddle around a tight circle of ten stones surrounding our bright glowing blaze.

And nothing draws a crowd like a fire.

We sit around it as groups have for thousands of years, enamored by the simplicity and the mysterious contrast it offers up to the night sky. Maybe a few things are different. Technology and different clothes, different hairstyles. But as a people, we haven't changed much.

Just a week or so ago, we had that day. The day where it was warm and bright. Where the shadows were crisp and defined by strong light, a welcome change from the dreariness of the preceding months.

And then hope came.

Of longer days.

Of wild flowers.

Of forest paths once more first and dry.

But I promise myself I won’t be duped again. I remind myself that the cold isn’t completely gone. That’s winter grip, the hardest to break, is still clutching the evening and nights. I know I have before, but this year I won’t allow hope to pull the wool over my eyes.

And then as the cardinal taps at my morning window, I wonder out loud if that is true.  

-JW