Difficult Season

Difficult season:

winters are hard months for me, true for many as well, be it seasonal depression or just the restriction of outdoor movement and length of daylight. It's a difficult season for some to make their way through. It is for me. Yet I do appreciate it's stark beauty, trees seen in the elegance of their lines, reminding me much of charcoal drawings, especially with the contrast of snow added to the view. Yes, there is beauty here and I am grateful for its note, a small gift received to navigate a difficult season. 

perhaps it's age now, the bite of cold deeper, lasting longer even after I escape its reach. As a child a played for hours in the snow, impervious to cold, only breaking for the warmth of lunch and then eagerly out for more. Only a few years ago I would spend hours on the trails, running and hiking through all conditions that winder could throw and still I stayed in motion. Being outdoors was my home, any weather found. But's its a more difficult season now, so many ways, and for whatever reasons it weighs heaviest on emotions, my mood matching the length of darkness for the day.

I miss the light.

and most of all I miss the green display of spring, from first bud in tentative reach all the way to the verdant  offering of its later season. Green, life, the vibrancy that arrives with light's return. The early signs of life are unafraid to brace the force of cold and venture to the touch of light. There are hints of green at first, a few leaves to lead the way from winter. I love to see this arrival of promise, not of hope really, but of something deeper, more primitive perhaps. The hint of green that arrives in the subtle point between  true seasons, earliest bud, the length of light increasing - this all speaks to me of winter's purpose, showing me of unseen, dormant sources working through the darkest days. What I am really shown is the seamlessness of seasons, an uninterrupted grace of letting go and all that returns without my effort. Each season holds the promise of life, from autumn's surrender to the vibrant green of spring and summer. Winter holds this promise as well, a difficult season, and yet so full of life in the earliest of stirrings. 

it's the promise of becoming. 

~

Peace, Eric