Winter and Spring

I want to write a short post.

There.

Just kidding.

I want to write a short post, but actually say something. That's harder.

I ran this morning, before church. I haven't done that in a long time, partly because it has been dark outside. My dog and I ran 'the point trail', which is the local name for a trail that circles along the top of a very large flat hill, so as I run along it I can look down at various points into three different valleys or, three views of one large valley. One view has a river which is finally free of ice and running heavy and brown, the other view is mainly creek and highway, and my favorite view is all trees, mostly Aspen.

Last October the whole valley was a vibrant yellow and then the winter winds blew all the leaves away and left the too familiar naked, spikey tree skeletons, stoically standing their watch through the endless, dark months.

The winter winds also blew away most of our retirement wealth, and my father, and my husband's father. It was a long and deeply cold winter filled with debt, cancer and loss.

This morning as we ran, the sun shone down into the trees and I could see the sage green spring growth beginning. It was just a whisper of green, more a shadow than a real thing, and maybe someone less hungry would not even have seen it. But it is there.

It tells me that over the next two weeks spring will come, and winter will finally have to let go.

And it always will. No matter how long, how dark, how deep and cold is winter, it always has to give way to spring. Always.

And one day, the spring will be forever.