Most mornings I get outside shortly after dawn to walk and soak up the clean Northwest air. It’s one strategy I apply to survive the long, dark Northwest winters. Others include vigorous yoga, living vicariously through my friends’ Facebook posts of their escapes to Hawaii and Mexico, binge watching any Netflix or HBO series, and the occasional happy hour at the end of a long, dark winter’s day.
It has, indeed, been a long, dark winter here- about six months long -- but dawn is getting earlier and on this morning’s walk I noticed robins...pairs of robins frolicking in the grass, chasing each other through the brush and up into the trees. Traditional lore says robins are among the first signs of Spring. But I question that. I’ve considered them among the less intelligent members of the bird world because they let us dangerous humans get too close, and they seem to arrive during the Spring tease right before that last killing frost. But...Dare I Hope?
So I went to the Internet, source of all Truth, specifically my trusty Audubon app, to learn more about these perky, red-breasted critters. What I learned is that this is their mating season in the Northwest. These birds were engaged in jubilant foreplay, and the girl robins even get to enjoy the occasional threesome before they choose the guy who’ll fertilize their famous blue eggs. I was delighted and that enlightening information awoke me to other signs of emerging Spring – the season of Fertility characterized by Joy and Lust.
Our returning family of conifer-nesting blue jays was romping in the yard. Dumb baby raccoons were hanging from the trees like monkeys. Pregnant does (plural of girl deer) were lumbering uphill having lost some grace to their burdens. The squirrels were scampering about. Crocuses were showing their purple and yellow heads, daffodils and tulips were poking their green spears into the air. And suddenly I could see green buds on every barren stick. I made it through another winter! I have a future and it looks bright!
As it turns out, the exuberance of Spring in Nature is contagious. Ancient Pagans watched the mating rituals of the March hare – a nocturnal animal that comes out in the March daytime to make more hares (Now we know where the Easter bunny came from) -- and those Pagans joined the celebration. Wiccans hail the Spring Equinox with the feast of Ostara by planting all kinds of seeds – wink, wink. Hindus in India celebrate Holi this time of year by dancing wildly in the streets and throwing multi-colored powders on each other. The Ba-Hai celebrate the New Year in Spring...of course! It’s newer than January. And remember that song in Camelot? It’s May! It’s May! The lusty month of May! Okay, just replace May with March, look up and see that Lust is all around. That’s what I’m doing today as I dig up my garden patches and start planting those seeds of Hope for the jubilant six months of spring and summer ahead.
I've been delighting in tree frogs, hellebores and crocuses but you take the delight so much further. Thanks Susan. Here's to the coming spring—we need it—which reminds me I have a few seeds to start!