This is a hectic time — too much to do and not enough hours in the day, even with the artifice of added daylight.
Winter is hard, but it is in the early weeks of spring that I begin to feel trapped: by the world, by the weather, by time. It’s partly a function of the liberation that warmer weather brings — not merely that of being able to go out into the daylight and feel a genuinely warm sun on our faces, but also the possibilities that such temperatures open up very year.
Yes, it sounds contradictory, but it makes perfect sense. Fall is hectic in its preparations for winter, but the encroaching cold is limiting; in winter, our activities are circumscribed by low light and heavy weather. Even in summer, it’s easier to find a rhythm, with the obligations of planting having given way to a more or less steady routine of tending and cultivation.
But spring? Spring floods us with a seemingly limitless list of options, nearly all of which are bound to time and schedule, and then declines to give us the serenity of weather that would make organizing our thoughts, much less our tasks and time, achievable. The mercury swings fifty degrees in a single day; a forecast that predicts no chance at all of rain is predictable mostly for the assurance that a storm will arise, even if it remains only clouds and wind, sound and fury. Wings and I were discussing only this morning the fact of the mantra that unconsciously escapes our lips too many times each day — There’s so much to do — so much, in fact, that it’s impossible to decide where to begin, much less how to go about it all.
Small wonder, then, that in this season, our small world, newly opened, yet seems to close in ever smaller.
In truth, we have been luckier this spring than most: less of the gale-force winds, although when they do blow, they have been extreme; warmer temperatures and less bitter cold and snow. Still, spring is an ever-unsettled season here, the only sure thing that nothing is sure, and at times like these, our desire to break free is balanced only by our desire for guidance.
Perhaps that’s why these days of the birds appeal to me so. They are delicacy and strength at once, speed and power and grace, small spirits who serve as messengers and escorts, guardians and guides. The smaller ones lend their feathers for fans and ceremony; the raptors carry our prayers to spirit (and occasionally return with a response). They are the most substantive of spirit beings, yet with the ability to rise on the winds of the vertical, utterly weightless. They are as busy as we this season: migration, mating, nesting, birthing and feeding and raising and protecting the next generation. They have their own tasks delegated by the spirit world, sitting watch, ferrying words and wisdom to and fro.
And through it all, they find time to be free.
They lift off as though gravity has no meaning, ascend and soar and swoop, occasionally executing a roadside or a barrel roll in the company of friend or foe. They come in for a landing with wings stretched near-upright, talons angled forward, able to stop on a dime or a single ropy strand of willow. And when it’s time to fly, they rise and fall as though the laws of physics exclude them from their canon, not so much leaping onto the currents as becoming one with them, an airy osmosis.
And in so doing, they prove themselves guides of a wholly different sort, as well.
It’s important to complete one’s tasks, fulfill one’s obligations. Work matters. But in a hectic season, it’s easy to lose sight of anything else, and if our ways teach us anything, it’s that balance matters, too.
In these newly-warm days, it’s important, once in a while, to stop. To go outside. To look up at the cornflower sky, feel the silvery sun, breathe in the earthy-scented air. To raise our own wings and take flight, as much as our spirits are able within bodies bound to earth.
To make time to be free.
~ Aji
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