This warm moon, and the warm weather (40’s today!), and tonight’s thunderstorms (thunderstorms!) could almost convince a person that spring is on its way.
But I won’t be fooled. I’ve lived in Iowa long enough to know better than to get my hopes up about spring. Not yet.
There was a time when I’d be more than ready to kiss winter goodbye by now. But nowadays, for the most part, I enjoy winter. Cooking comfort foods. Farm conferences. Snuggling on the couch under a quilt, watching movies. Catching up.
“There’s a point where you can give up on winter–when temptation can enter your soul, prying its way in like cold air through the cracks in your cabin–around January sixteenth or so, and this can make you realize that February’s coming, and beyond February, March.
See, I don’t yet realize that March will be the hardest month. Early February’s the coldest, and often the snowiest, but March, strange, silent March, will be the hardest.
The danger in yielding to thoughts of spring–green grass, hikes, bare feet, lakes, fly-fishing, rivers, and sun, hot sun–is that once these thoughts enter your mind, you cant get them out.
Love the winter. Don’t betray it. Be loyal.
When the spring gets here, love it too–and then the summer.
But be loyal to the winter, all the way through–all the way, and with sincerity–or you’ll find yourself high and dry, longing for a spring that’s a long way off, and winter will have abandoned you, and in her place you’ll have cabin fever, the worst.
The colder it gets, the more you’ve got to love it.”
~Rick Bass fr. Winter -Notes from Montana
(HT: Wish Jar Journal, Keri Smith)
3 years ago:
2 years ago:
1 year ago:
It’s in the 50’s today – makes you want to get out there in the mud…..it will be here before we know it. But we need 1 more cold snap to refreeze the ground so we can spread manure – ugh.Kris
We’re in the 50’s too but it’s gonna snow again in the next two days…dang!
amen