Left a comment at Lileks place last week. Attached a photo of our backyard. The snow is in retreat for sure, but the freeze thaw cycle had created rows of snow and ice chevrons, jutting up from frozen ground like angry hackles on the back of some primordial beast. I did this as a gesture of northern solidarity, to assure him eventually winter would leave Minneapolis alone, and we Alaskans understood the pangs of snow in April. An empathy for the still frozen. There exist so many things in modernity to hold our attention, yet still the whims of the season have power to stir our laments.
It cuts both ways. I stepped outside our master bedroom door with coffee in hand, expecting the chill of a late April morn, and instead was surprised by the warmth of the sun that had hours earlier breached the mountains like a kiss in a bluebird sky:
It felt like triumph over long odds, survival, “We’ve made it through another winter!” Birds of every kind reported from tree branches, a light breeze wafted the first scents of spring, and somewhere, way out there, beneath the still surface of Resurrection Bay, I imagined I sensed the collective arousal of expectant salmon. The first drink of coffee tasted better somehow, the call from Happy Wife in the kitchen downstairs — “Breakfast is ready” — sounded even cheerier than usual. Yes, you think, this is what blessed means.
Even the dogs were exaggeratedly pleased:
