Last Vestiges of Winter

My soul cannot be satisfied this morning; nothing is quenching my thirst, calming my mind.  Silence overwhelms.  Desperately searching for a way to stop reeling, I tune into Spotify.  This genre, that genre, nothing soothes me.  I turn it off.  Eventually, I give into silence and accept that my mind is anything but still.

Trekking through the park, the last vestiges of winter afoot, the creek flows between pure white banks.  In the distance, birds are singing their morning calls.  This will all be gone soon; twenty degrees will be forty in just a few hours...

Brilliant sunlight pouring down, the earth warms, the snow begins melting but the larger rivers and lakes remain completely frozen.  Few humans are enjoying the trails this morning; perhaps it's because it's still twenty degrees.  Everything still, everything silent.  Everything except my mind.  A seeker of solitude, I am wary; six miles in and peace remains elusive.   I am sad, I am blue.

At the other side of the lake, I take a new-to-me path.  Perhaps it will reveal something the known-to-me path cannot.   A new experience may be exactly what my spirit needs.  I meander around the lake, cross the dam, and continue up the hill.  This lake was the first place I came when I moved to this town but I haven't hiked this side of it.  A new adventure at hand, I breathe in the air, continue forward, and begin to feel hopeful. 

The sun is high is high in the sky.  I soak in the light; it warms the earth, my face.  I hear birds singing all around.  The snow is falling from the trees, the ice melting rapidly.  Spring is not far off; hope is finding its way back into my heart.

It's forty degrees now.  I circle the lake in its entirety and return to the path that takes me home.   In just a matter of hours it looks totally different.  I laugh at myself for falling off my well traveled path, not just once, but twice.  I am in a different place now; my mind is calm, I am hopeful, and everything is as it is meant to be.