Spring in Shadow

As we sit here, in this liminal cradle between winter and spring in the northern hemisphere, I find myself eagerly looking for green and blush to haze over the woods, for the brambles to bud, for the snowdrops and crocuses to lift their delicate heads. But these things have not yet come to the chilly little valley in which I live, and I am impatient. While I have come to love the clean and crystalline beauty of winter and the coziness of a snowfall (even if the cold remains difficult for me) spring seems to speak to something deep. It is the cessation of rationing, the promise of plenty, the season for weaving flowers into your hair. As articulated in the Carmina Burana’s Ecce Gratum as translated by A.S. Kline:

Now, the pleasing
longed-for Spring
returns and brings delight;
violets brimming
meadows filling,
sun makes all things bright.
Now sadness yields to light!
Summer nears,
Winter’s fears
fade into the night.

Ah, spring! Is it possible not to look for it? No, no I don’t think so. And that is all well and good. But what of this space before? Between? This gray stretch we are just nearing the tail end of? I think we would be remiss to simply glide over it, for this is the space of invisible work. It’s a bit like using every part of the animal; let’s not waste the gristley bits. Rather, let’s find what they have to give us.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to live in a time and place where the coming of spring was literally the difference between life and death? I can’t. I cannot fully grasp what it was (or is for some) to watch the sky, the earth, the wind and measure the meager hints of its secret changes against my dwindling stores of grain. To be less than certain that the softening of the seasons would come in time, come with just the right mix of rain and sun, or indeed, come at all. The thought is terrifying, and yet, I wonder if in the absence of such fears, half of spring’s face has become shadowed and shrouded. There is more here than optimism and rebirth; these days are tinged with dread. They are underpinned by the iron tang of helplessness in the face of great forces. This gray space, between the cold and the greening, is freighted with considerable weight. Not exactly fun stuff. So… why not skip it? Just shut the window, turn on all your lights, and await spring in all her teeming glory! This seems entirely reasonable, but it seems to me to be an eminently modern option, and at the end of the day, we are hardly a modern animal. Anything so primal surely deserves our attention.

We can see this balancing act between renewal and death scattered all over human mythology and mysticism. Goddesses go to the underworld, gods return from the dead. Countless men and women die to the world as monastics or hermits so that another life might be opened to them. Humans know, have always known, that if you wish for renewal you must risk death. So let’s sit at the crossroads a while—while we eagerly await the daffodils—and let’s move from the material world to the wilderness of the soul.

Humans know that growth requires sacrifice, but we really don’t like it. We would rather look only on the bright side of spring’s face—Rebirth! Hope! Bunnies!—and really, who can blame us? But you cannot blossom if all your buds are blown, you cannot wake if you were never asleep, you cannot be reborn if you have not died. We want the second part of spring without the discomfort and stock taking of the first. We wish for blooms on top of blooms and leaves on top of leaves and lushness never ending! We do not worry over how we shall feed such growth, what we must sacrifice to it, what weaker things we must crowd out.

We want to live in eternal and exponential summer even as we don our pastel robes and ask for more, ignoring that those robes were sewn for branches bare, and they cannot fit over our over-leafed heads. It is my personal and not at all original opinion that it’s precisely this voracious tendency that is responsible for so much that is wrong in the world. We want more, and we want it for free. And whatever you do, don’t ask us to sit in silence alone in our own company. Don’t ask us to take that critical eye we are only too happy to cast on every one else and turn it inwards. Don’t ask us to take stock of ourselves. Because that’s hard, and scary, and has something of the grave about it. I was promised bunnies. And soft dewy skin. And maybe a new hair care routine to help it recover from the ravages of central heating so it can live its best hair life yet beneath my pretty flower crown. That’s the kind of renewal I was after. What the hell is this?

Oh, such sweet creatures are we. But we will get nowhere like that. Everything else in nature knows it. The snakes sleep in their deep places, the trees slumber, the stones grow cold. They sit in silence and they take stock, as they must. As we should. Everything has its cycle, and there’s no cutting corners when you live on a circle. Oh, but we will try.

So in these last gray days, I say settle into it on purpose. Steep yourself in the stillness and the silence. Let yourself die back so that the small, secret, invisible work has space to begin. No need to cut, or prune, just look around. See what you’ve been feeding, and if it isn’t something you wish to cultivate in your garden, stop. I know, easier said than done. I feed things I shouldn’t every day but, well, noticing that I’m doing so is the first step. This is the other half of spring, her steely edge. Persephone as the dread queen of the dead. Let us restore spring to her wholeness. Gaze on the gray as well as the green. You may find that it is not gray at all, but shining silver.

It is raining today, and as I write this sentence the first proper downpour of near-spring has come and gone. It is just warm enough to open the windows of my apartment, and I can feel my ferns (I do not seem to be able to stop adopting ferns) drinking in the cool, moist air, the breeze running its fingers through their fronds, so woefully undisturbed all these long winter months. In the wake of the rain, all the world shines in the soft gray light. The trunks of the birches flash, the clouds are an iridescent pearling gray, the waters of the river rush by bright with cold, and all the rocks are glass. All the world is gray, but oh how it shines!

Spring can too easily be reduced to its effervescent end point. Full of new life, love, and the freshness of new beginnings. Don’t get me wrong, these things are wonderful! But much work must take place beneath the ground and in the air before the tulips can open our eyes with their blazing colors, reminding us what it is to be saturated and rich. Let us look spring full in her face. Let us bring ourselves to her dread crossroads, and let us linger there. Slowly, our tender colors will reveal themselves. Quiet, pale pinks, shy greens and yellows. Let them not be overshadowed and smothered by last year’s flowers clinging to their brightness. If left to develop, these tender colors will grow strong and vibrant in their own right, and the dun grays of winter will melt before them as a lover caught in the gaze of the beloved. They will know that for the love of them, you have risked death.

The art featured in this post is Cockatoo and Pomegranate by the Japanese artist Ohara Koson, 1877-1945. Sourced from Artvee.