15th March
There’s been a shift in light and colour. The equinox looms with the promise of Spring. I think about how now is the time to notice the weathered and dried seed heads. They don’t feel as rough when I pinch them as I pass by anymore, no crunch and bristle. They have softened, and the remaining seeds float to the ground effortlessly.
Like my skin regenerating cells, there is chaotic yet precise bustling under the ground, pushing life upwards, aligning into a serene moment of calm before an eruption of life. Winter feels full of a sustained anxiety, that the things I love won’t return. And I think now is the time I need to re-build faith that they will – those inevitable things that feed my soul, make me feel connected, and sparky and alive. I make a sincere promise that rattles in my chest, that I won’t take them for granted. If they come back, I will love them so deeply that when winter returns, I will survive it again.
The spiral. To always be and not be.
Geese fly over, I first saw them a week ago. It’s all happening and I am here to see it. Somewhere between meteorological and astronomical is the phenological, the truth of it all.
16th March
Flashes of sun between persistent mizzle. Great weather for ducks, better for the frogs. Every pathway has an audience of tiny eyes. I tread onwards with deep concentration and take the opportunity to lift a frog off the path, remembering what it feels like in my hand, a tiny beating heart, soft and delicate. When was the last time I did this? Maybe I was a child.
When the rain stops the sun is fierce and wonderful. The sky is in turmoil and unsettled, undecided. The loch is a mosaic of liquid patterns, rusty reeds dance within it and the wind catches my breath as I trace a gust across the water and it collides with my skin. Ducks dive and the evidence of beavers scatter the shore. The only sound is of birds and rain. I think about how this is how it should be.
17th March
I think this is it, Spring. I’m not looking to the mountains, they aren’t how they should be, but the sun is too tempting to ignore. I want too drink it all.
Birch tendrils brush the loch surface, millimetres between physical existence and a form built of hydrogen and oxygen and light, and minerals and dancing grit. The dreamscape hills dance in a gently billowing mirror. I take the time to watch, and watch, and watch. I don’t look away from the water for a long time.
Tiny beings flutter in front of my eyes, like small angels or faeries, they draw me from a trance and I watch them too, following them. I suspect their life is brief, born from the water, drawn out by the light. Maybe that will be me in my next life – something starting life in the mud, finding my way towards the sky before a glorious end. It seems so simple and appealing.
Where I sit, other small invertebrates join me. They sit on the pine roots basking, gentle flutters of wings and mechanical looking faces and legs. What are they thinking? DO they think?
There is a thin blue line between the water and the pine. This is one of the unseen things I seek – a void, or a portal, or just a simple band of light reminding me that there are worlds I cannot know. I realise then that it is 12 years of visiting this loch, 12 years of the atoms in my legs bounding towards the boundary between earthen roots and water. And today I can see the entire universe greet me. My most welcome home. Where I see constant renewal and life, and am fortuned to spend time at every given opportunity.
Life wasn’t always like this.
A dozen years in the Cairngorms.
Pollen sits on the water – possibly alder or hazel. It’s a sign of emergence and I’m immensly ready for it. It gathers at the loch edge along with teeny creature husks and insects – some emerging from the water, some enticed by its shimmer. A soup of life, of beginnings.
19th March
I’m not myself today, there is hazy sun and I am out of the house, but I am not present. A lingering pressure in my chest makes everything seem difficult. Unnatural, un-me. I snap a rock in a loch and go home.
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