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.
