Helping Spring

I'm staying with my folks for a couple of months so I can focus on finishing the book. One of the advantages of living here is the 87 acres of forest to explore. After a long time living in the city, it's actually pretty refreshing to be surrounded by nature, and as the snow melts away, I'm getting more excited about exploring again, just like when I was a kid. Every day my brother and my friend James and I used to go back and make adventures for ourselves -- finding trees to climb, making new trails, and discovering new secrets in the woods. Our property merges out back with the river, and if you follow the riverbank, there are so many things to discover.

Closer to our house is a creek. If you go back this time of the year, it's just starting to fill up as the ice melts. Out on the front yard, the snow is all gone, but back there the shade of the trees has preserved some of the snowbanks, and there's still ice on the banks of the creek. I've been going back every day to spend some time at the creek. The trickling sound of the water is comforting, and it reminds me of all the best parts of my childhood. I like to just stand there and breathe, and be alone with myself for a while. I remember going back at this time of the year as a kid and kicking all the ice along the bank so that it would fall into the creek. I would sometimes get a big heavy branch, and crack even more of the ice, pushing it all in to flow with the current. I remember feeling like this was "helping" the creek start to flow faster, so that all the ice would be gone, and spring would come. I've been doing some of this every day, to help spring along its way. I think it's working.