birch road blog

Spring Swing 20-14

Spring in Colorado is a crazy porch swing ride that flings back and forth between winter and summer, often in the same day. Yesterday I could sunbathe. Then it dipped into the 20’s last night and brought snow this morning. You could actually sunbathe IN the snow, which folks do here. It’s called skiing.

Colorado springtime has been a good teacher for me about drawing together the most incongruent, seemingly opposite things and trusting the combination will eventually work out. If I stay in a place of child-like curiosity, the swinging springtime is really a terrific ride.

But no outdoor plantings yet! Not time for garden boxes! And no margaritas on the patio. Still. Too. Soon. Can’t help but fantasize about it though, in the warm daytime sunrays. Driving on the long, straight, timeless road of Infinite Possibilities that runs between Alamosa and Moffat. If I’m lucky “Ziggy Stardust” will even play on satellite radio.

However, I am now the proud possessor of one precious iota of Patience’s virtue. Don’t smirk. That’s a TON more than I arrived with 48 years ago.

I’m speaking metaphorically about spring snow and porch swings and endless highways of possibility. But my patience-growing is literal. I no longer try to put out salvia in late May no matter how gloriously warm it’s been for weeks—because it will DIE. And I don’t pack my socks away in the winter top-of-the-closet box until mid-June, and even then I keep 2 wooly pairs for summer camping—because my feet WILL get cold in June.

Nine Colorado spring times have been good and practical mentors to help me make up some of my patience-deficit. Hopefully an iota will be enough in the coming week of challenges and the Grand Cross (which is a unique astrological transit that peaks April 23, but winds up and down beyond this exact date.) Another way I could describe this time and this transit is that it mirrors our individual and collective capacity for heating things the hell up. I follow these maps of astrology because I like ‘em. They speak to me. It's OK if you don't. My wise and funny husband says much the same to me when he watches ESPN. But even this is metaphorical.

What the deeper teaching is for me in this spring of polarities, what the cosmic statistician might be measuring is: How OK are we with our own inner versions of Wild Rumpus? How adept have we become at knowing when to add kindling and when to just let it simmer. And for this, Maurice Sendak gave us a great “map” in “Where the Wild Things Are,” how to face dissolving realities with child-like wonder, and how to say “Stop It” when it’s time for us to go home and have warm dinner with our family and loved ones.

I can’t control the weather anymore than I can control the parts of my own inner nature that arrive, as Rumi gracefully puts it, like House Guests. I DO have a lot more choices now about how I respond to House Guests like wet snow in April or other horned and shaggy-haired beasts who appear in stripey t-shirts and etc.

Be well out there. Stay open, heart and eyes. Enjoy the ride. Springtime in the Rockies, and all Wild Rumpuses, eventually settle down.

posted by Kathryn @ 11:55 AM