Spring really is coming

The ancient Celts celebrated a festival called Imbolc around the beginning of February.  It was their acknowledgement that, even though winter still held the land in its grip, the spark of light within the earth was alive and spring was coming. 

I've always thought that, at least where I live, the Celts were a little early.  At the beginning of February in the Buffalo area, winter still has a powerful and often snowy hold on the land and there seem to be no indicators that the trees will bud and burst into leaf any time soon.  But, in early March, the story is different. 

I stood outside at the bus stop this morning and breathed deeply in the still, cold air.  It was thirty degrees and the wind took that temperature down into the twenties but, undaunted, a lone cardinal sat at the top of a tree singing loudly, letting everyone know that this was his turf.  Off in the distance, the crow that I call The Sentinel cawed loudly, gathering the flock for another days foraging. 

Snow still covered the ground and, in between the song of the cardinal, the cawing of the crows and the passing of cars, silence still reins in the wood that surrounds my home.  The falling of that silence signals the beginning of winter to me and the breaking of that silence, by bird song and crow caw and human or animal movement, is a sign that winter is passing. 

As I stood, breathing deeply and being as present as my grasshopper brain will allow, I thought that I could actually feel life beginning to return to the trees, almost as though the old ones were cracking their eyes and looking about to see if the time to rise had come.  In another few weeks, they will stretch and come out of their 'beds', green will burst forth everywhere  . . . spring really is coming.