Melting Ponds and Jogging Moose
It is Springtime in Alberta! I love all the seasons in Canada. From warm Summer nights to the soft white blankets of snow in the Winter, I love all the seasons. However, unlike my children, I do have my most favourite and least favourite season. My absolute favourite season is Autumn! I especially love it when we have a late season burst of warm weather and I can walk through the brightly coloured trees smelling the scent of earth and leaves and wood warmed by the sun. It is my favourite...hands down. My least favourite season is Spring. Sorry Spring! I like Spring well enough but it is kind of a muddy messy season. When you have dogs, that is not so much fun. And as the snow melts, the discoveries from the dogs is really really not so much fun. I do not hate Spring. It just makes me wrinkle my nose from time to time. But I also know that I really should not play favourites so I have been focusing on what makes me smile in Springtime. New leaves slowly unfurling in the sun makes me smile for sure. It seems to take forever and then overnight they are suddenly open in a beautiful bright green. That is wonderful. Now that I am foraging I am really noticing the new growth in the spring. Yesterday I found a mushroom patch that had me quite excited. I was sure they were morels so I picked one for further investigation. The further investigation revealed it to be a highly poisonous variety which was quite promptly hurled out the back door amid much flurry and excitment whereupon my fellow forager Daisy misunderstood my intent and promptly ate it. No worries, ole iron guts is still alive this morning. I must say though that this incident has done nothing to improve my feelings toward Spring. It is a messy complicated season in so many ways. It is the BIG change. Change can be difficult. Change can be ugly. Change can be really really messy. But change is also a necessity in life if we want to grow and experience different things. Spring is the big bad Mother of change.
Change means that you haul your family across Canada in the middle of winter driving through no less than 3 blizzards. Change means that you live in a dirty cold rental in the city. Change means that you deal with a corrupt moving company who breaks and losses many items in the move and demonstrates an utter contempt for fixing or locating these items. Change means saying good-bye to dear friends and facing the challenges of making new friends. Change means new roads and new paths and being utterly lost all the time for quite some time.
Change means finally following a dream that you have hoped for since 1988. Change means watching your children simply step out the back door and canoe or horseback ride or hike or ski...and just be in the moment. Change means living in the woods with the soothing sounds of nature all around you. Change means realizing that you are the luckiest person in the world to have the friends that you do have - old and new. Change means getting to know the moose up front and personal-like. Change is a rhythm that makes life more alive and pounds and pulses with the possible.
So Spring and I are going to get to know each other a little better. She is a complex creature that poses many questions for me. Like why do the moose jog up and down the road in the Spring? Why is my pond lifting out of the ground with radiating cracks like a UFO rising back to the mother ship? Why must the Northern Boreal Frog fill the night air with music...all night long? And for the love of God, why can't my neighbour start his outboard motor...or could that be the mating call of the Ruffed Grouse?
So Spring, like the big bad Mother of change that she is, challenges me to just wash the mud off my boots, unfurl my leaves and grow a little each day.
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Change means that you haul your family across Canada in the middle of winter driving through no less than 3 blizzards. Change means that you live in a dirty cold rental in the city. Change means that you deal with a corrupt moving company who breaks and losses many items in the move and demonstrates an utter contempt for fixing or locating these items. Change means saying good-bye to dear friends and facing the challenges of making new friends. Change means new roads and new paths and being utterly lost all the time for quite some time.
Change means finally following a dream that you have hoped for since 1988. Change means watching your children simply step out the back door and canoe or horseback ride or hike or ski...and just be in the moment. Change means living in the woods with the soothing sounds of nature all around you. Change means realizing that you are the luckiest person in the world to have the friends that you do have - old and new. Change means getting to know the moose up front and personal-like. Change is a rhythm that makes life more alive and pounds and pulses with the possible.
So Spring and I are going to get to know each other a little better. She is a complex creature that poses many questions for me. Like why do the moose jog up and down the road in the Spring? Why is my pond lifting out of the ground with radiating cracks like a UFO rising back to the mother ship? Why must the Northern Boreal Frog fill the night air with music...all night long? And for the love of God, why can't my neighbour start his outboard motor...or could that be the mating call of the Ruffed Grouse?
So Spring, like the big bad Mother of change that she is, challenges me to just wash the mud off my boots, unfurl my leaves and grow a little each day.
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