Lingering on purpose

Honouring the season within

One of the beautiful scenes I encountered as I chose a short walk over the relentless pursuit of productivity on this snowy spring day.

I’m watching snow fall from the window of my studio on the second day of astronomical spring. It’s an invitation. I will eventually rebel against the internal task-master and head out for a walk. This week’s wintry forecast (completely predictable and normal for this time of year in this climate) coinciding with the vernal equinox will cause many people to low-key riot, as if some great offense had been personally committed against them. It’s spring now, don’t you know?

So then, what is spring? Could we look not at what we think it ought to be but what it actually is? Because we go through this every year, devastated when an emerging tulip or poplar bud gets covered in a fresh blanket of snow. The ground hasn’t even thawed yet and we’re trying to dig up the soil. The local gardening group I follow on social media has members fretting about the bees and bluebirds they saw on the balmy weekend, assuming they will perish if conditions are not perfectly aligned to what we deem to be acceptable now. But what if the flora and fauna are not caught by surprise? What if they’ve evolved and adapted to seasonal undulations? What if we have, within our own cells, that capacity as well?

What if these fluctuations are spring?

What if the easing into growth is spring?

What if all the signs, glimmers and hints are not false starts but the natural progression of things? Because if I actually listen to my own body, she needs the easing in and out too. She needs adequate time to shed winter’s skin¹ in preparation for the season to come because spring and summer leave us exposed and vulnerable in another way. It costs a lot to bloom.

Even though I can feel myself emerging from a very long winter - one that has stretched far beyond a meteorological distinction - I need to honour where I’ve been and the mystery of where I’m headed. I’m speaking both literally and figuratively here: winter has been a safe space for me and I am grateful for it. I have needed winter’s protection and isolation. Spring has felt incredibly unsafe at times and it was when I finally gave myself permission to hang back, lingering when I heard the internal whisper, “don’t rush, not yet”, that I began to experience the refuge I desperately needed. I wish I had heeded that voice sooner. I wish I listened more readily now.

There is something else I’ve been feeling in my bones these days - something that is partnering with that winter voice, not overriding it. It feels like a different version of hope, a different version of courage: watching, waiting, moving, becoming, emerging. Even though it may appear on the surface that we’ve been plunged against our will back into a season we’ve already left, I choose to look closer. Something else is happening. And I watch it stir. I watch its fits and starts. I watch with excitement and anticipation in the echo of “don’t rush, not yet”. Spring is not a switch I can flick on the 20th day of March, abruptly forcing myself into a summer’s productivity. Nor do I want to. I want to linger. I need to. I am more fully alive in my slowness.

A quick sketch of snow-kissed poplar catkins in my perpetual nature journal.

I’ve been keeping a perpetual nature journal for over three years now and it is one of the ways I stay observant to the season as it is. There are so many times when my assumptions of what should be are thwarted by the evidence of my noticing recorded in these pages. The patterns cycle just as they are supposed to. If we let them. They move, adjust, adapt and evolve as they need to. I want to be like that.

Maybe I could experience spring like a migrating mountain bluebird making the long journey back to a seasonal home or a bumblebee on a cleansing flight² or a trembling aspen catkin covered in its furry coating so it doesn’t flower too eagerly. I trust I will know when it’s time.

Here, I will linger in the expansiveness of all that is spring.

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¹ The phrase “winter’s skin” always reminds me of this song.

² Did you know that honeybees don’t hibernate during winter? They stay awake and take advantage of warmer days to take cleansing flights to relieve themselves and remove any deceased bees, returning to the hive. Nature is the coolest.

Other ways I embody this value of lingering is with decor in my house. I leave winter decorations up long after Christmas, slowly transitioning out of the glitter of the holidays but not leaving things barren. And then, with the spring equinox I put the last of the winter garb away. I will listen to internal cues for readiness, waiting until Easter to hang a flowered wreath on the door or switch out the linens. Simple visual cues and practices to not being in a hurry.

Reflections for your own wandering/wondering:

• What is your relationship to winter?

• What expectations do you bring into spring?

• In what ways can you honour the season you find yourself in?

May this spring meet you where you are and usher you into the place you need to be.