Winds of Change

It could best be described as spring fever, or perhaps seasonal burnout, my mental state as of late. I've been loath to don a jacket of any kind, and even a vest has been an imposition. There has been a deep-seated desire, bordering on a junkie's need, to go to the Alpine Garden Center. Never mind starts won't be available until early May and we've yet to renew our community garden plot, I want to go poking around. My rationalization to Sabina is perhaps we can at least acquire further ornamentation for the flower beds and around the property, to help with its sense of funk, because you gotta have the funk.

It's boggy mud and crusty dirty snow around town. More and more yard becomes visible. Daily, I find myself excavating evidence of the hounds from bygone blizzards. Something I dislike about this time of year, I admit, but waiting everything is fully thawed and melted is a sense of macabre I dare not even contemplate, and I'm a contemplative kind of guy, if you've not noticed.

The trails are studies in mud, ice, crusted snow, and bare rock. This is the time of year, when going on walkabout, sometimes you carry the snowshoes with you and perhaps end up not using them. Depending upon the face, skiers and boarders bitch about how the occasional fresh powder we get does little to cover the freeze-thaw crusts. The cast of light has shifted from winter's harsh and distant glare. It's so blissfully warm one day and snowing the next. The face of springtime in the Rockies.

The winds have howled through our Sahel, sculpting the snow in interesting ways. When going up the 730 the other day, I paused more than once to watch the snow devils dance across the high peaks. Phantasmal colossi, stretching into the jetstream, leaving their fragmented remains across the mountainsides. It is something I find fascinating.

Sabina mentioned a jones for sandals, and I do empathize. I'd like to wear shorts and ride my bicycle again. Of course, my bicycle is in our back folly and the door is behind what is easily a five foot drift of snow. So it goes. This gives me perspective; in order to get to my bicycle, or to gain access to the folly, I must be patient. The same can be said for wearing shorts and sandals.

My patience is formidable, not infinite, but formidable...

At the Cabin Fever Dance we spoke with some fellow drop-outs from down below. Cats we were acquainted with back in the greater metroplex, although, Sabina moreso than I, but she is more outgoing. We spoke of the differences between that urban existence and the pace of life up here.

I mentioned how I am not nearly as nocturnal as I once was. These days, midnight is late enough for me. Of course, I grew up in rural environments on a farm, my happy-waking-up-of-my-own-power time of nineish would be considered sleeping in, and, depending on what I'm doing with my day, I see it as such too. How things change.

Of course, any time I get too suckered into how much things have changed in the course of my forty-one and change years, I take a good long look in the mirror at the aberration staring back. Too tall, too skinny, with eyes too big for the rest of my face. Long, thick, wavy, bordering upon curly hair, tattoos and piercings. It's then I ask myself what really has changed.

Lots of things. A fair amount have stayed the same. Mei fei tsu. It's a matter of balance; light and shadow, fire and water, chocolate and peanut butter. One cannot exist without the other.

A warm breeze blows and our tiny world thaws every so slowly, changing from deep winter to early spring. Mud. Meteorological prophecy foretells snow, but that's the way of it. The cyclic wheel turns and I sit back, sipping my tea, listening to the rhythms and rhymes of the cosmos, content with my part in it. Soon enough, there will be shorts and sandals, I just need to be patient, but that's not a problem. After all, my patience is formidable.