There’s something about the rain. Right now, the world is dark, the sky pressing down like a glove. The snow drifts have hardened, blackened and are now decaying, their edges resolving into water.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night and went outside. It’s been raining steadily now for the past two days, and will continue to do so for a few days more, but at 3:00 or so AM, the rains had stopped and the world was quiet. I was barefoot, be-robed and alone. I pulled my robe tightly around my shoulders and breathed. I smelled muck and rot and salt flowing away. I smelled billions upon billions of microbes shaking themselves off and preparing to multiply. I smelled dormant grass and sleeping trees thinking green thoughts and dreaming green dreams.
In the last days of winter, the snow displays the ugly reminders of our impact on the world – salt and exhaust, mined sand, harsh chemicals and dog shit. As the piles age, the story written on their faces grows and grows; it writes over itself again and again until nothing gleams, nothing glitters, nothing remains pure. All that’s left is the dark gray, the shadow of us on the world.
But in the spring, the world washes itself clean. In the spring the world is new again. Each spring is the first Spring, each breath the first Breath. We step into the green.
Kelly Barnhill 