Here Comes Spring

Spring never ceases to amaze me. But it’s not the first blooming crocus. Not the daffodil hanging heavy after a cold snap. Not even the return of the blue bird, two of which chirped and chased up Shuford Creek just last week. No, it’s not the tell-tale physical signs of spring that get me.

It’s the creeping, subtle workings of the underground and underlife beneath the forest canopy, through the river rock and past the stretching roots, into the cold, dark, damp of soil. It is the subconscious movings of the earth that tickle me. So easily, we think the mind is not connected to the body; that our heart-decisions are made by thinking harder and that our success is measured by our own pushing and persistence.

Instead, I like to believe we’re ruled by a parallel process as witnessed in spring. Things begin to hatch. Old ideas blossom anew. Ancient wounds burn for a while as the body remembers. Seeds break through the hull, pressing ever-upward driven by what-knows, how-knows, who-knows into the fresh air, tips towards the sun. Some of our dreams become reality as possibilities awaken in day-to-day life. Things start to take hold and stretch a little, trusting the elements and putting faith in the way of things. And so it is I feel similarly called during the dawn of this season. There are new things waiting for me one county over, where I’ll move next month. Maybe I’ve come full circle here in the South Toe Valley and the stem of my body keeps leaning ever-more towards a new sacred space, an even quieter place, where new challenges await, coercing me to grow and crack and breathe and bend like the ways of Spring herself.