Spring is here. No matter the calendar’s insistence, nor that of earth’s turn and sun’s angle, no matter that less than a week ago, the low was at least thirty-four below: Spring has arrived with its customary havoc.
Our world here has been launched suddenly into a full and fast-moving thaw, with highs near fifty now, numbers that will sprint into the mid-fifties by week’s end. The earth under our feet is a mass and mess of mud amid the snow — still many, many inches of white upon its surface, but melting fast and turning the plowed areas into rivers of sucking mud.
But none of those is how we know that spring has arrived in all defiance of time and season. No, we know because it has blown in upon the winds that are ripping through the trees, rattling buildings and rocking roofs.
Spring here is two things: wind and mud, both extreme. For those of us with horses, it’s also colic season.
To say that it’s my least favorite season of the year is an understatement.
The result is that I must force myself to look beyond the risk to the horses; beyond the stress on our own bodies of the wild swings in temperature and the battering winds; beyond the inconvenience of air that’s a vortex of blowing dirt and residual snow, an earth that’s a boggy brown quagmire sucking at our soles (and souls). We are entering the time of year when I have to look, actively seek out, the beauty in this place and fix it firmly in the forefront of my mind, so that its influence trumps the unpleasant aspects of the season that threaten, like the mud, to suck my mood down into the mire with it.
Winds and thaw alike are early this year, no doubt another artifact of climate change. Valentine’s Day is a week away, and at our elevation of some 7,500 feet, this time of year should still look and feel like winter. Even so, a good foot of snow remains on the ground in some places, and the nights remain clear and cold. There will be much more snow yet to come, no doubt, before the calendar rolls the seasons over, and more yet before we reach the planting season.
For now, my favorite times of day are dawn and dusk, not merely for their relative quietude, nor for their weighty symbolism, but for the soft ethereal beauty they confer upon the land.
It is a gift.
The image that has captured my attention for today is one that Wings took with his film camera three years ago — taken not around Valentine’s Day, nor even in February, but rather, at dusk on New Year’s Day. Still, weighted as this week is with all the symbolism, even baggage, of the holiday that remains yet six days distant, this image has always reminded me of two things: artistically, a slightly Asian motif; symbolically, of the mix of gifts and solitude, love and melancholy, that so often accompany Valentine’s Day. Anyone who has ever spent the day alone, or perforce distracted by the stress of more urgent matters, will understand what I mean by that; combined with the sense of commercialism involved, it’s one of the reasons the day is so easily derided as a “Hallmark holiday.”
And yet, neither solitude nor melancholy is necessarily a bad thing in itself; both are often exquisitely beautiful. And perhaps that is one of the qualities in this photo that speaks to me of an Eastern sensibility, of a sense of philosophical equanimity with what is.
At sunrise now, the light turns the snow pink and gold; at twilight, warm burnished copper and coral adance with rich subtle blues. The red willow for which this place and its people are named turns truly, deeply red, the color of the upcoming holiday, the color of the heart and the lifeblood that flows through it. The chamisa and smaller spirits pick up the pinks and the coppery tones, too, basking in the reflected glow of a retiring sun.
And amidst it all sit the small stone cairns, the hoodoos, the piles and stacks of indigenous rocks, slate and granite and less identifiable substances, warm earthy blues and hues. They have been here all winter, of course, but now, the thaw has presented them anew, the melting snow unwrapping them slowly like a gift, an offering in exchange for the inconvenience of the winds and the mud.
The extended forecast predicts a continued unseasonal warming trend, one that promises to strip the land entirely of its snow-covered blanket, forcing it to arise from the slumber of hibernation, to discard the dress of dormancy, to gird itself for the work of the year to come. It will require the same of us.
And so, as the snow disappears daily, inch by inch, one of our tasks is to seek out that which the thaw uncovers — to find these early gifts and allow appreciation of them to inhabit our mud-tracked, wind-blown spirits.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
