spring

Yesterday was in the 50s; tomorrow we’re expecting a foot and a half of snow. Today, impending storm notwithstanding, I am so cognizant of spring. Nowadays it’s much more than just the weather—it’s an energetic experience that I feel, not just see. Or rather, regardless of what I see, whether it’s migratory birds beginning their nests or snow obliterating the spring crocuses, I can feel the energy of spring pulsing behind it. The time of new beginnings—but new beginnings require endings, too. 

Three summers ago, after the sudden death of my life partner, I took to walking the long wooded driveway where my daughter wouldn’t hear me cry, and that’s how I discovered that walking was incredibly beneficial to my mental health. Since then I’ve never missed a single day, which means it’s nearly three years now that I have observed the seasons’ progression, daily watching the shift from lush summer to dry autumn to dark winter to bright springtime. I’ve internalized that autumn’s withering and winter’s hibernation are a necessary precursor to the blossoming of spring. 
But this spring, I’m aware of more: the energetic shift. I had a long, dark winter, literally and figuratively, but my entire being has awakened now. My energy has exploded. My awareness has shifted from my internal world to the external one. Change is happening everywhere, and I am also causing it to happen.

Nearly two weeks ago, for equinox, I drew a tarot spread for the next three months of springtime, and the primary card was the Tower: change is coming! Big change, possibly cataclysmic change, which made me feel nervous and victimy until I realized, well then, why wait for it to happen to me? Why not take back my power and cause some change? 

So I got busy. I released a romantic connection that no longer felt vitalizing. I relaunched an old program just because I love it. I stopped talking about moving house and made a specific plan. Oh, and after spilling a cup of coffee across my laptop last week, I made one more change I’d been adamantly avoiding: I gave up recreational screen time, meaning no movies, news, or social media for a month. YIKES.

I don’t think I could accommodate all this change at one time if it weren’t for springtime and my attunement to it from daily walking in nature. Something primal inside me is powering me, transmuting this seasonal energy into personal energy—I don’t know how else to describe it: I am fueled by spring.

I think this is how we always lived. Before we cut ourselves off from the earth and moved indoors to worship at the shrine of screen entertainment instead. I’m not advocating for a return to subsistence farming and living in lean-tos; I just know that, in fewer than three years of practicing presence in the natural world, seasonal energy has become a power source I can consciously plug into. 

And as I write that, I recognize the connection between that and unplugging from screens, that this is in fact a natural next step. My realization that I was checking out from my life through screen entertainment, a lot, didn’t happen in a vacuum: it happened in the wild energetic unfolding of springtime and my own conscious presence within it. 
​
Winter regenerates the soil in preparation for springtime growth. I just didn’t realize it would work that way inside me, too—if I let it. Tomorrow’s snowstorm notwithstanding, spring is underway, and all I really have to do is be present and let it unfold. Say yes to the changes. Acknowledge the sadness of the undesired endings, embrace the exhilaration of the new beginnings. This is the natural way of things; my mind may push back, but when I get present, my body knows how. ​