Spring of existence

Coming alive once more.

When Spring arrives at Pembrokeshire’s coastline

I woke up this morning to the sound of birds in conversation with one another. It is one of my most favourite things to hear.

An all consuming peacefulness crept over me. A gentle, intentional caress. The relief was immediate.

Better days ahead, the birds said. Peel back the duvet and start your day, there are good things on their way to you. Sunshine and warmth and energy that begins at your core and spreads to your limbs and makes you feel alive. Really, truly alive.

There’ll be creativity and willing, some get-up-and-go. And on and on they sang as I lay in bed, smiling and hopeful.

Spring has always felt this way for me. I really do love winter but I forget about the hibernation, the effects of a constant greyscape hanging like heavy curtains just beyond the windows. When Spring pokes a tentative toe around the corner, I begin to feel more awake. My senses twitch and wriggle, testing the waters, coming alive once more.

Suddenly I want to spend more time in my body and in the world around me, standing outside in the fresh morning air with a mug of tea in hand, while sunlight kisses my face, or laying in my warm, soft bed, listening to the birds sing.

Spring is for existing, for paying attention to the world as it wakes, for really feeling what it is to be alive, to feel the changes in our bodies and minds as we come out of hibernation together.

This is my Spring of existence. Standing in the kitchen and baking Miso Pecan Chocolate Chip cookies while the room catches that golden early evening sun. Waking up after the sun has risen, curling up on the sofa without my phone and instead with a coffee and my dog for half an hour before starting work, listening to the bustle of the school run on the street outside.

Sipping wine and playing chess at the dining room table while the skies outside darken, realising we got a little bit more of the day today. Going on long ambling walks in woodlands and fields where things are starting to bloom, or along coastlines awash with sunshine.

Every year I tell myself winter will be productive, there’s nothing much to do except stay inside and write. Every year I expect the same and every year and I fail, because I forget about my season of rest, my annual and automatic tendency to become insular, to turn my dwindling energy inward. I spend a lot of time thinking, every thought is rinsed and repeated. By the time Spring rolls around I am a tangled mess of thoughts, in need of a reawakening.

Trusting that I have absorbed what I needed from my winter of rest, when Spring arrives I do my best to step out of my mind and into a world that is opening up once more. The birds and the buds and the softening breeze, I want to feel it all so keenly. I want to absorb mother nature’s wakefulness, her determination to rise once more despite it all. I want to do the same.

And I believe we can, we can get up and keep going despite the horrors unfolding minute by minute across the world. We can feel a sense of hope, if only during the moments we look through our windows to see the season turning, to see nature doing her magical resilient thing. The world may feel like it’s on fire and closer than ever to some kind of end, but sometimes we can find evidence to the contrary, if only in the conversations being had by the birds outside our windows, as we lay in our warm, soft beds.

Happy Spring, happy St David’s Day, happy daffodil season. Happy reawakening to you, lovely human.

listen, to feel alive