Friday, March 20, 2015

To Begin Again

The season is changing here in California from winter to spring, and it’s only the middle of March.  We’re on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and spring has sprung like a lion.  It came so fast this year.  The fruit trees are well past budding, and are already fully flowered.  It feels like we’ll have fresh fruit in just a matter of weeks.  The wood stove has been shut down for some time now, and the coats have all found their way back into the closets.

I am stirred to begin again.  It happens every spring.  Time for cleaning out the emotional closets, seeing family and friends, initiating new projects, and getting the fishing gear back in order.  People are out looking for homes to buy, or dropping in at garage sales to pick up things they’ll eventually sell at their own garage sales.  The boys are out looking for girls again, the girls looking for boys, and the animals are out looking for food.  Everybody, and every thing, is hungry for something or other.  A mountain lion has been working the area recently as evidenced by deer and skunk carcasses we found yesterday in the woods.  Got to be aware of that.  It’s spring for them around here too.

We’re finishing up the last of the winter soup and getting the grill ready for chicken, burgers, and dogs.  Our dogs are running wild every day on the hikes we’ve been enjoying.  Although three, and five-years-old, they’re like a couple of puppies on steroids tearing up the side of a hill, across a meadow, or down a steep embankment to get a drink of water from the creek.  They’re wearing down their nails again as well, and working up a lather for an eventual splash in the lake to cool down those over-heated motors.  It’s good to see them so energetic.  It’s fun to watch, but better yet, it’s fun for them.

The cycle of life.  Living in the mountains enables us to participate in it fully, rather than simply understanding that it happens.  Everything does change from season to season.  The change is in us and around us.  There can be no denial of its magnificence, its significance, or even of its consequences.  They are each interwoven into the fabric of life; the turnover of the weather, the emotional temperament of people and animals, the reaching for dreams, or settling for the dreams already achieved.  It is all affected by the natural seasons, by the birth or departure of those seasons within us.  I am affected.  We are all affected, whether we realize it or not.