Though on a snowshoe yesterday, it may not look like spring...
Go ahead and laugh, but I feel it. It is there, as soft as a whisper. As subtle as the sound of the river running beneath the ice and snow. It is there, a promise, silent and discrete, in the velvety afternoon air, the warm winds that blow from such a distance to the west, in the heavy loads letting loose and sliding from the roofs, in the icicles dripping and developing longer every afternoon. The delicate grey branches of the aspen trees are sending out their glossy red shoots of new growth. Buds on the tips of the willows have begun to swell. The seeds are secretly planted. The belly begins to swell. She but alludes to the raw umber beneath the endless cloak of white. Undetected to the average observer who sees only snow and ice, the breath of the mountain is deep and husky and sings of a change towards spring.
I am not fooled. I am certain winter is not through. She rests. The mountain allows herself a deep breath, a heavy sign, and prepares to resume her course of seasons. A January thaw. We have one every year. And every year I feel the same. Triggered by some instinctual urging, I begin to look for new life, notice the slightest changes, feel the new minutes of day light, revel in each tiny transformation. The patterns I should know by now, and still I question myself, my knowledge, my ability to predict or guess the mountain. When I assume unpredictability, she is steady and sure. When I think I finally know her, she changes her song quick as a whistle.
Despite my uncontrollable inner longings, I am not ready for spring. I cling desperately to this winter as a frightened babe to her mother. I need it to last, just a little longer. So many projects, so many things I wish to accomplish, so many plans left incomplete. Still. Winter is my time to do, and I am not done. I ask her to take her time, make each day last, as each one will, just another minute longer.
Hanging like a drop of water on the tip of an icicle. Will it freeze and become of the icicle, elongating this slender dagger? Or fall, leaving no more than a dark stain on the wooden deck awaiting evaporation in the afternoon sun?
...yet willow buds begin to swell