Back Home by Chris Hardie
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In the course of my writing over the years, the topic of spring is among my most frequent musings.
It’s logical when much of my inspiration comes from the land and the seasons. Winters seem to be getting harder as I grow older. The prospect of something green and new is something to look forward to.
Officially the vernal equinox – translated from Latin words meaning new or fresh and equal – occurred at 4:24 p.m CDT Monday, March 20 when the sun shone directly over the earth’s equator near Meru, Kenyan. Tucked away in the hills of our west central Wisconsin farm, my wife Sherry and I celebrated with our first campfire of the season.
Like most springs, it was the juxtaposition of the seasons. Our chairs sat in the snow. While we have yet to spot our first robin, we listened to sweet avian music greeting the new season.
I recalled former observations about spring. Sometimes it comes softly, with the gradual snowmelt and the gentle warming of the soil that is the green light for the first shoots of the year to awaken from their winter sleep.
Sometimes spring comes hard, with a big warm-up or a hard rain that sends rivers of melting snow sweeping across the landscape. You can hear spring from the roaring sound of the creek that runs through our valley struggling to carry the water downstream.
This year spring comes reluctantly. We’ve had a few of those days where the faint touch of warmth teases but is carried away by cold north winds and replaced by the cruel laughter of Old
Man Winter and his snow.
And yet, spring is upon us. The turkeys are gobbling, the geese are flying and spring bulbs are slowly emerging. Even with below normal temperatures, you can feel the warmth of the sun.
Perhaps this year’s lesson from spring is to remind us that we need to practice patience. In a frenzied world fed by mind-numbing social media and intrusive consumer tracking, we want and expect more and more to happen instantly.
We’ve become a world where searching, scrolling and buying is as much of our routine as eating, drinking and sleeping. We fill our senses with the nonsensical and believe what we want to believe.
Why? Because it’s easier. We form opinions, send electronic messages and withdraw into our tribal clans populated at times by people we’ve never actually spoken with. We conveniently bury the truth instead of seeking it, look the other way and find blame with someone else instead of looking at our own accountability and actions.
The vernal equinox gave us a day of 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Light and darkness. Darkness and light. A new and equal start. Yin and yang. True equality from mother earth while we squabble and kill over differences of religion, color or belief.
Our first taste of spring was brief, as unfinished tasks awaited. We promised that we needed to sit around the fire more often this year to unwind and simply enjoy each other’s company and presence. No one knows how many more we – or any of us – will have together.
Life, indeed, is too short and too precious to be fretting about the perceptions of others.
Another season of hope awaits.
Chris Hardie spent more than 30 years as a reporter, editor
