Here we are, IT IS SPRING!!!

            I do my very best to be as content as possible with every season.   I try to never think about the weather being too cold, too hot, too this or too that because that inevitably makes you leave the present and look forward to some other weather / time combination that probably won’t be perfect when it presents itself either.

            That said, I love spring for all of the reasons that everyone else does.  There is a feeling of rejuvenation as the snow melts, valleys fill with water and you realize that healthy grass is actually green and not brown.  I feel it does the same with the soul.

            After the last few months of winter, work and travel, I found myself in a state of complete, desperate exhaustion; gas tank empty in the middle of nowhere kind of exhausted.  Then I took a look around and birds were chirping, the snow was receding from my steps and a quick glance over Carson Valley confirmed that things were happening.  Carson Valley is considered the desert, but for these precious few weeks (or maybe months this year due to record snowfall), it is full of water and life.  Calves are filling the pastures and migratory birds dot the reflective marshes of a normally brown, barren landscape.

            Even the name, “Spring,” conjures thoughts of bouncing forward with energy and enthusiasm.

            Suddenly, I am not exhausted anymore.  All it took was seeing and feeling that change and I underwent my own transformation.  Instead of feeling beat down, stressed and stretched to the limit, I feel light, nimble and able to jump the hurdles in front of me. 

            I wrote about a lot of these seasonal changes in me last fall in a post called, Transitions.  I mentioned an association of time and place with seasons and how at each turn of the year, old memories of that period in the calendar resurface.  For me, spring is about hanging out with good friends, completing tasks from the previous months (school, assignments, etc…), getting into rivers swollen with the year’s snowmelt and in general, resurfacing.  Coming up and taking a breath, looking around and appreciating what an amazing change is happening.

            One of my favorite ways to feel and celebrate that change is through kayaking.  Like I said, around here rivers are swollen with the year’s snowmelt coming down in a rush of energy, transporting new life in all directions for hundreds of miles.  It can be scary and challenging if you pick that sort of run to get on, but I don’t know any other way to completely immerse yourself in that change than to paddle through rapids with water charging all around, feeling the slightest changes in current and adjusting, reaching the lip of a drop and taking one long and calculated stroke, pulling forward out of the water and landing in a pool with your buddies laughing and cheering.

            To me, that is spring.

(Not my best image, but it illustrates exactly what I am talking about.  
Good friends on Oh Be Joyful Creek, Crested Butte, CO in Spring '08.)