As I write this, it is officially spring, if only by a few minutes: I have had to be awake extra-early this morning, and am up in time for the vernal equinox.
Not that anyone would know; it’s still dark outside. No shift in the light is visible when the only light is the distant glow of moon and stars.
Still, when the sun rises, it will once again confirm what the calendar has only just gotten around the realizing: that we have bade farewell to winter, if not quite once and for all.
In this place, winter returns repeatedly, if usually only for short visits. The latest I have seen snow fall here is June 10th, although this year, we had precious little snow at all, overall.
That means, of course, precious little runoff from what small snowpack yet remains.
The Rio Grande’s water level will be low this year; so, too will that of the other local watersheds, including the Rio Lucero whose waters feed the irrigation of Pueblo lands. Planting season this year will require extra strategy and effort, and not a little conservation.
Still, with spring comes the thaw, the time when the waters run — perhaps not so high and hard and fast as in years past, but they will run nonetheless. It is a season of action, one of primal, elemental power and motion, a time when our world here is filled anew with an animating spirit.
Despite current highs in excess of the seventy-degree mark, the extended forecast predicts snow for the end of this week, with more to come again next week. It will arrive in relatively small amounts, of course, just a brief appearance within the rain that is more characteristic of our too-warm temperatures. And, as the season requires, we will adjust even as the weather changes with whip-like speed and intensity.
For this day, though, the skies will be clear, the winds warm, the day bright. As I get ready for the day beneath a still-dark sky lit with a million silvery jewels, I know that we will welcome the longer days and warmer weather that will, overall, accompany the change of calendar. And we will value the water all the more highly for its lower levels this year.
We say that water is life, but too often, these are empty words, sloganeering of the cheapest sort. In this season, we will have reason to know the truth of them, because this is the time when the waters run, the time when they fill the world with a new, and renewing, animating spirit.
~ Aji
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