Juxtapose

The woods and pastures are joyous
in their abundance now
in a season of warmth and much rain.
We walk amid foliage,
amid song.  The sheep and cattle graze
like souls in bliss (except for flies)
and lie down satisfied.  Who now
can believe in winter?  In winter
who could have hoped for this?

-Wendell Berry, from Sabbaths (1998)

A few weeks ago, I lost one of the people I've loved most in my life, someone who brought me joy and insight in equal measure, someone who made me feel at home in the world.  My mind and body have been ringing like a great bell of grief.  I'm not sure what I think about the world without her in it.

But the season is giving---light and greenness and rain---and I am grateful for that.  The creek is high and it sings to us all day through the kitchen window.  The cranes have returned to the river and the pelicans to the marsh.  Most of my perennials made it through the winter and they are budding and leafing like mad. 

I've been returning slowly to climbing, a once-beloved hobby that fell by the wayside in grad school and one that I've struggled to reclaim.  After some dispiriting days of feeling irreparably out of shape and completely without guts, it's starting to get fun again.  And it's serving me to do something that feels both playful and a little scary, that forces me to stay in the moment and let go (well, hold on, ideally, but let go...).  We're gearing up for a Memorial Day trip in a couple of weeks, my first real climbing trip in a handful of years, and I'm excited. 

Last night I made a big batch of curried carrot soup with citrus and cilantro.  I intended to take photos---it's beautiful, really, vividly orange and studded with bright green---but when we sat down to eat it became clear that I had frightfully over-cayenned the thing and I was too bitter to capture it.  I'll plan to post a less mettle-testing version of it soon, and I'll try to remember to snap a shot of my leftovers at lunch tomorrow.  It really is a pretty soup, if a little menacing in its current spice proportions.

Happy spring.  Happy growth, happy change, happy green.