Winter is Over

IMAGINAL JOURNEY

I am a wind on the deep waters
I am a fish, I bear the soul theough the dark waters
I am a tree, I suck the poison and transform it to life.

-- Asphodel P. Long

Tonight I'm thinking it's better to offer a little than none at all. The bear has been hibernating and is now poking her nose out of the cave. Spring is here and the long winter is over.

For weeks on end this winter I've watched the turtle house in our family room next to the sliding glass door downstairs. Week after week, both critters were burrowed into the house, drawn into their shells, eyes shut. No one ventured out to eat and the water in their minature pond evaporated with no turtle visits. I picked each of them up a few times during the winter. With eyes closed or slits barely open, they would send me a strong message: "Hey, I'm ASLEEP. LEAVE ME ALONE!"

OK, OK, put the turtle back gently....sorry guys.

A few weeks back they started coming out a little bit at a time....now they're out, and hungry, albeit a spring snowstorm the other day had them scuttling back into their shelter to hunker down for a while.

"She [the bear] not only survives the barren months, she gives birth. She is the caretaker of the unseen world", writes Terry Tempest Williams in "An Unspoken Hunger".

Terry also writes, "Above ground in the abundance of spring and summer, I am available. Below ground in the deepening of autumn and winter, I am not. I need hibernation in order to create".

Enough said. At least for tonight.

I'm glad it's Spring.