Melting

I’m beginning to feel that feeling of having too much on my mind, too many areas of focus, too much involvement in too many things. My feelings have been hurt by someone other than my daughter in recent days. It’s a sure sign of overload. I need some time and space.

Luckily, it’s almost cabin time. I went out to visit her yesterday but only stayed a minute. It was a combination, I suppose, of cold, and things to do, but it wasn’t that cold and there wasn’t that much to do.

Still, at this time of the year, when it’s just topping 40 degrees, there’s a need to prepare the cabin and yourself for cabin time. It’s way too chill to go out in the morning. But if the weather holds, I can tromp through the snow with my heaters early Saturday morning, and spend a few hours there in the afternoon. My soul yearns for cabin time.

The change in the landscape since I wrote last has been enormous…inner and outer.

The snow is melting. I was on the freeway for the first time in a while the other day, and the banks to either side are free of snow. I don’t know if this is due to the steep slope of the hills going down to the freeway trench, or if the major highways have the majority of snow removed all along, but it was startling. There it was – the dirty looking signs of spring. And under the tires the potholes, and in the paper, even on the front page, the beginning of the pothole discussions that will go on until the snow falls again, complete with diagrams that show the anatomy of the hole. I meant to read it but never did get around to it. That’s the way things have gone lately.

This morning there was a hawk perched over the yard, and the attendant crows, but the hawk’s gone now and I didn’t see him leave. That’s the way things have gone lately.

The icicles have melted, the parking lots are almost free of their dangerous patches of dirty ice, the birds are singing, and when the sun shines, people are out in force, walking their dogs or their kids, but I haven’t been out for a walk. I spent last weekend doing taxes. It’s a sure sign of spring, and a sure sign that this coming weekend, I need cabin time.

I’m a little down. I get this way from time to time. There doesn’t have to be a reason, but there usually is, and I usually look for it, and it rarely has little to do with anything other than the feeling of needing time and space. This time there’s the extra component of having given a talk and the doldrums that come after. That is done. I try to move right on to the next big thing on the horizon, but the energy isn’t there….

So I’ll get my cabin time this weekend, and maybe shake off the winter doldrums, and feel the heat of the sun falling through the window onto my face, and remember that the landscape doesn’t change in a flash. There’s a slow melting. While it happens, there’s a refreshing that goes on, but also a few potholes.