This weekend, it happened.  Here, anyway: the Moment occurs in its own time in each and every place.  Yesterday afternoon, I felt the change, and this morning’s short walk in the nearby landscape between the house and river left no doubt: winter is over, and spring is in the air.

Oh, we’ll surely get more snow, a few more deep freeze nights; the frost-free date for our gardens is still a couple months away.  Yet the unmistakable signs are all around.

The sun is toasting my skin, my flesh, my bones.  The morning breeze feels warm, not chilling.  Under the box elder, cottonwoods, and junipers in the bottomland, that eager spring grass shines bright green.  A bee came by to say hello while I sat on the wooden bench (though the hive in the base of the elder appears to be still dormant).  The stream is flowing clear and near its strongest steady, non-flash-flood, best – too wide to jump across!  And the water’s singing its sweetest springtime songs: tiny-bell cascades of light, bright tones chime from little riffles every ten feet or so.  From any spot where I stop to look and listen, two or three of these distinct clusters of stream-voice call gently, one a bit upstream, another a tad downstream, and sometimes also a third, directly below my dry-dirt perch on the bank.

Only three nights ago – Friday – darkness brought a sudden, deep single-digit chill.  Saturday, a cold wind kept me hustling on my way when outdoors.  Yesterday, though, after a morning in the house, I was surprised to feel a high-50s warmth when I came outside to do some greenhouse chores.  And now, Monday morning, it’s springtime in Cañoncito!  So it feels like we turned some hidden corner this weekend, and suddenly, all has changed.

Yet of course, it’s never so distinct.  Perhaps more like rounding a gradual bend, revealing a changing landscape.

Photo: Ann Hunkins

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