There’s a lot going on right now (more on that soon).
But I didn’t want to let today pass unnoticed.
It’s the vernal equinox, the first day of spring. Every human on Earth is getting the same amount of daylight today, if not the same quantity of solar radiation (it’s gloomy and rainy in northern Indiana).
Our feeling of time has been off the last 7-10 days. Weeks and months of change compressed into a single day. Stock markets down, then up a bit, then down again. Schools closed, restaurants shuttered, new rhythms being established with uncertain time frames.
Anxiety has increased. The unknown, the probable, and almost certain. The anticipation. We are even now in the season of Lent, contemplating our own mortality and earth-ed-ness.
Today we would normally be assembling at Moontree Studios for an equinox reflection. Instead, we are dispersed and not physically gathered.
It is not an escape from the pain, certainly, but to me there is a comfort in the consistent rhythms of all things wild. No, not that they are not changing, and sometimes irreversibly so, but there are laws that govern and patterns that re-emerge again and again. Not unlike music… always using the same notes and scales, but with infinite possibilities of composition.
Before rushing to comprehend – and quicker still to judge – we need to first be fully present.
Take a deep breath, and consider the peace of wild things (and listen to Wendell Berry read his poem by that name).
We will get through this, together.
Love your reflections, Adam. The poetic, the scientific, the peaceful!