I just discovered that I've been rather a wimp when it comes to spring. I love summer, and fall, and winter too (you can only really appreciate winter if you can get outside in it, though). But spring has long been my least favorite season, because it seems to be characterized by water from above and water in puddles below, making everything rather damp and inconveniently muddy.
However, I decided today to find out if perhaps the key to enjoying spring, like winter, is to get right out in it. And wonderful discoveries did I make!
I first headed out through the fields, where I heard the sound of water running. No, not just sloshing under my boots, but actually running. It turns out that what is in the summer just a slightly inconvenient dip for the hayrake to bump over, is a regular stream in the springtime! Having grown up with a brother who found great fascination in running water and the concurrent erosion patterns, I stopped to notice how the water would run in a little rivulet, disappear under a mini glacier of snow, then reappear further down the way, hurdling over snowmobile tracks in a regular whitewater display!
I spent a while loitering in the hemlock forest, listening to the squirrels scold each other, and enjoying the greenness of the branches amidst a world of brown and black and white. It was really beautiful there, even though I saw my the first mosquito of the year!
After supper, I went out to pile up some of the branches that snapped off our giant pine tree in the big ice storm. The wind had picked up now, and whatever smells it had borne before it reached the pine tree, they were dispelled by its tangy fragrance. That smell makes me think of lazy afternoons at a campground, when there's nothing much to do and one can be perfectly relaxed.
When it was time to quit, I thought about heading inside, but then I saw the ridge behind the barn silhouetted against the darkening sky, and decided I had time for a little stroll up there. As my boots sloshed and slurped through the mud in the barnyard, the wind carried all sorts of smells, some of them pleasant, some of them, well, not so much. But once I was on the hill, the wind just smelled like wind. It was beautiful up there! Ducking under a couple fences, I went right to the highest point on the farm, and stood there on a piece of ledge, right out in the midst of a springtime evening in March. The wind came streaking across the fields, surging against my eardrums, making my ponytail whip with a hissing noise, knocking me off my center of balance, and then, when it seemed that it could hardly move any faster, it whirled around with a boisterous "Haha!" to smack me with another gust. Strange that the touch of moving air can seem so fierce, almost frightening, and yet be thoroughly exhilarating.
I sat down for a little while in the midst of the tumultuous evening. The first star of the evening had appeared, and shone, serene and quiet up in the heavens, seemingly oblivous to the hurry and flurry that surrounded me. It was a speck of clear white light, in the midst of a sky that was painted with greys and muted blues, faded orange and sedate yellow set off by burning pink. The verse came to mind, "then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known." (1 Corinthians 13:12) How good to know that I am fully known by God, and that knowing me, He loves me and has forgiven me because of the Lord Jesus. And what a wondrous hope, that someday I will know fully the One of Whom the power of the wind, the glory of the sunset, the promise of springtime, are just the faintest shadows.
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