By Darcey Blue French

March 1, 2002

Finally, after a long winter's nap, spring comes. What is it about spring that tells you it has really arrived? Even though she is fickle, the weather in spring can turn at the drop of a hat, you KNOW the day when spring has come- you can feel it in your bones, in the air, and on the earth.

In spring, even the simplest pleasure makes us giddy with joy. Seeing the first crocus of the season, or the first bunch of dandelion greens excites our senses and awakens us to the many gifts of spring. You begin to hear birdsong, long absent during the winter; and the mornings are light again. The sun awakens early, coaxing the earth out of her slumber and quickening our blood, with its gentle warmth. Soon after you begin to see our fellow creatures emerging. Woodpeckers struggling to crack open tree trunks, ducks paddling and dunking their heads into the river, young snakes crossing your path in the warm afternoon sun, and geese, harbinger of spring, honking and flying north again.

You begin to smell mud, and green, growing things in the wind that has suddenly become warm. Buds on branches are swelling, and growing downy in preparation for bloom. The ice on the pond retreats further each day and the water sparkles with the promise of summer swims. And then there is the first feeling of sun and wind on your bare skin, shivers of delight course your body as the bittersweet wind caresses you. After a long winter of remaining well covered, spring dares you to bare it again and you feel an overwhelming urge to go outside, to run, to play and put aside all other cares.

There is an intangible special tingle in the air. The atmosphere hums with life, almost as if you can hear the sap running in the trees and the shoots and buds of new plants straining and bursting forth from the ground. In spring the world comes alive, and you feel it inside. Your blood runs quicker and you ache to breathe in the sweetness of spring, because you too are being awakened by spring's gentle fingers.

Beguiling us with her many charms, spring is nature's way of calling us back unto her burgeoning breast and open arms, and when you touch the earth you feel her life flowing into you. Stand barefoot, sit upon the ground, touch the dirt, caress a tree, hunker down close to the tiny spring blossom and behold life, renewed once again. Another cycle of seasons has been completed; the wheel of life has turned back again.

Spring is blessed- when she whispers quietly to me, I know that life is full, and good; I am awed by the miracles and renewed within, just as life without is renewed again after a long sleep. And just as the earth reawakens each year, I too will awaken and be rejuvenated time and time again, despite the coldest of seasons.