Busy being alive
notes on spring in the north, cont.
The change happens so fast our eyes cannot follow it. The snow shrinks from the marsh grasses. The river rises into flood. Wood ducks bustle through the flooded wetland below the house, showing off their burnished markings.
The willows bud. Rhubarb peeks its red head through the dirt. Irises make brave green spears. The bees gladly escape their house, soaring up on a pleasant wind.
It won’t last, this sudden warmth that sucks away winter’s lingering bite. The snow will be back on Sunday. But in the meantime, everyone who can be outside is out. Sweating where we’ve been shivering. Giddy with the abrupt onset of spring and the temperatures that have swung upward by more than 40 degrees.
I’m out too, in the yard with the dog. The snow has fled except in the cool shadows on the north side of the house. We can walk, run, dance, prance on the beaten-down brown grass.
The dog is thrilled. We are here TO PLAY. All her long-lost friends, the tennis balls and the blue whistling ball, have been uncovered by the slithering-away snow.
I toss the blue one for her. And that is when I discover the miracle. Somehow in the last 24 hours, my dog has figured out how to fetch.
This was not the case yesterday, as far as I know. Or the day before. But today she brings the ball back every time, her tongue hanging out, covered in dirt and brown grass. Of course I fetch, her manner informs me. Why are you so excited?
Well, change is happening at every moment, I suppose. The rhubarb grows so fast that more has unfurled every time I look at it. Green buds stripe the rose bushes. And dogs learn a new skill all on their own.
Chunks of ice still hurry down the river, borne away toward some distant confluence. The busy wind stirs the branches of the pines. After the long, still, unyielding winter, everything is in a sudden rush. Flowing, pushing. The metamorphosis doesn’t wait for us to stop or find time in our schedules. We don't say to the iris, Start growing next Wednesday about 2pm when I have time to pay attention to you.
No, the whole world is busy being alive. I cross the yard, noticing how my body instinctively tries to balance against snow that is no longer here. I expect to slip and stagger. Yet the snow has, except in shade, vanished as if it has never been.
That is how change happens sometimes, I suppose, ever so slowly, with such minuscule progress you wonder if anything will ever shift, and then all at once it comes on in a great leaping bound. We are pushed forward into new territory whether we’re ready for it or not, our bodies still adjusting for a barrier that is no longer there.
And then even though the leap has happened, sometimes we get pulled back. The rain will turn to snow and coat the ground again. The dog may forget how to fetch. It will take another leap for spring to truly come, but we can all feel it now, itching around in our veins, the world readying itself to bloom.
By the way, friends, I notice there are more of you around these parts (well over a hundred now! hooray!), and I have to say, I woke up at 12:30a.m. the other night and after worrying about DVTs, climate change, various elections etc, I had a bit of an identity crisis over this substack.
Originally The Tangled Path was supposed to be about the creative process, and I still want to write about that. But only writing about that means I’m just staring into my head wondering how I do what I do, when the truth is a lot of the time I just sit down and do it without magic or fanfare. (Okay to be honest, I don’t think there has ever been magic or fanfare but I can hope.) Then I added a splash of mysticism in with mentions of near-death experiences and our friendly ghosts here at Chez Callie. Then, fiction and art. And now nature writing!
What will people think this thing is? I wondered in the dark. Aren’t I supposed to stick to my brand?
But honestly, the absolute freaking inability to stay in a box is my…uh…life brand, you could say. In fact my “professional” writing life has gone something like this:
COLLEGE PROFESSORS: Callie writes lovely award-winning literary fiction.
ME: I shall write a trilogy of high fantasy novels that encapsulate as much of the genre as I possibly can!
LITERARY AGENT: Callie writes fantasy.
ME: I shall present you with an experimental historical fiction novel with no particular plot and a lot of internal dialogue!
RANDOM EDITOR PERSON: Why do you write so much different stuff, you are freaking me out, who are you?
ME: …Oops?
So, this is my long-winded way of saying I hope you are enjoying my current “branding”: I feel this substack really encapsulates every little bit of who I am, as Callie, the human being. A little absurd, perhaps occasionally sublime, and everything in between.
Thanks for being here!