Spring Break, Part 2

Caught up in activity to pass the unstructured days of a Spring Break, the sun began to shine...

A universal landscape of snow surrendered as a trickle from the heights of branch and rooftop, seeping slowly down, down, as the blanket of snow--weakening, reducing, seeping, balding against the earth--found  the thawing soil drinking it down toward the tender growth seeking the strength to stand and plume.  The melt, quickening with frantic pitter-patter, dripping, tapping gutters, bouncing and draining, trickling streams flowing in an ambient activity of water marching toward a new identity.

And, soon, it all aligned as it should, and light found the ground and the vibrant green of young growth, not yet deepened and matured, almost glowing against the early morning sun, and we awoke and found Spring.  We opened our doors and windows to her eagerly, and with her, activity emerged at every turn.  Humanity found song with the birds beckoning an awakening to the senses.

The second week of Spring Break was, in fact, Spring, and we did not take it for granted.  We rambled outdoors and went on a hike toward a destination of abandoned dwelling.  The trail led us toward a home built in the late 1800's,  now sitting quiet, empty, hollow.  Much like the Winter season now behind us, it was lifeless and much too barren.  I thought of the sounds that had echoed in the halls and bounced off the trees and streams around it so many years before.  A mother, I'm sure, once chased her children outdoors on a day like our day, as they scrambled around and into one another like children do, squealing and zig-zagging through the woods.  As I padded atop the tender moss, I imagined her shoes laced tight in purpose, treading along side me, from one out-building to the next, performing duties to see her family clean and fed and satisfied.

I gazed at the structures now, lacking soul, lacking a family.  Little more than lifeless wood and cold stone with no purpose.  It had witnessed the bustle of life in another age, like the giggling and tromping of my children in the shadow it cast this April day more than 100 years since the foundations laid.  I am struck that we are essentially the same, but time has marched on, and here we sit, non-threatening trespassers, observing what live had been here in this clearing.

We dined at picnic tables.  We blew bubbles.  We turned our faces to the sun.  We basked.

The kids are different when they enter the natural world.  It provokes their imaginations and embraces the herd of them, without the constraints of walls or hypnosis of technology.  They had been saving up this energy all Winter long to bash and tumble, run and chase, climb and fall and roll and laugh and cry out as all children have, since the beginning of time, when Spring had finally come.