Good morning.
Spring has finally arrived in earnest. I live in Vermont so when, according to the calendar it becomes Spring, it’s still snowing on and off. But when Spring really arrives, and you can see dirt and grass starting to emerge from it’s temporary death. The air smells dank and wet, yet somehow warm and sweet. Fall and Spring are my favorite seasons, and I’m often torn between the two, but Spring has something different about the feel and tone of the season.
Fall is the season between life (Summer) and death (Winter), and plays the role of transitioning from life to death. We cut and stack wood, fill our freezers with food, unpack the warm and protective clothes, and get ready to survive the Winter. Trees shed their leaves, animals hibernate and store food and supplies, and the air cools and everything moves a little slower and more purposefully.
Spring is the transition from death to life, rejuvenation, rebirth, growth, movement, action. We get outside more, expose more of our bodies, become less protected in order to grow. Most people I know prefer Summer to Winter, but I’m a diehard Winter myself. People get ready for Summer by blooming in Spring.
Spring contains maple sugaring season, which if isolated into it’s own category is my favorite season, no contest. The smell of the death being swept away by rainfall and warm air is the experience of Spring. Sugaring season is the most effective time of year for me personally to let my demons drift away with all the Winter melt. It’s incredibly liberating to know that the planet, the Earth itself, is going through the same sort of cleaning that I do.
Fractals are identical, self-repeating patterns. If you’ve heard of them, you probably did in the context of math, or science. The most common examples of fractals are leaf veins, ferns, snowflakes, and the Romanesco Cauliflower. If you search that last one, you’ll see that the whole of the vegetable, is the same shape and design, as each of the smaller protrusions, and each of those smaller protrusions have their own protrusions that are the same and so on and so forth. They’re very cool, and occur frequently in nature.
The world is cleaning itself and getting ready for the year, and we’ve devised terms like “Spring Cleaning” to mimic those actions, and then within the physical cleaning of my living space, I can also use Spring to help me clean out my mental space, so to speak. This repeating pattern of cleaning and renewing in Spring, feels fractal, and feels so primal and natural, that this is the time.
Sugaring season puts me in the woods, in nature, doing something so old and traditional that it’s origins lie in folklore. Making maple syrup feels the closest to a fantasy world that I’ve ever felt.
Springtime is for new growth. To use the pent up energy left over from Winter to do something new and better for yourself. I quit my job, so, pretty drastic changes on that front. I needed to do it in order to grow, and live in the way that I felt nature was pulling me.
Don’t get me wrong: Fall is great, Thanksgiving is my favorite (arguably the best) holiday, and few things feel better than sitting around a wood stove eating and drinking with people you love.
One of those few things, for me at least, is the first deep inhale of true Spring air, taken while standing in a familiar grove, the sounds of the universe passing in every direction, the intense calm and peace that follows the exhale, and the wisdom gained from the simple observation that now is the time to break free of the frozen crust and grow.
