March Winds

Enter Madame March. That feisty, transitional month where my favorite season - Spring - comes alive. Winter makes its retreat into the abyss - good riddance, you cold-hearted fiend! We have little hints of warm air - that delightful current that soothes your skin, wind-chapped and brittle from the cold. I must say that March is certainly rearing its lioness mane with strong, biting winds and chilling downpours over the past few days.

The week's forecast predicts a dreary lot. A very British weather pattern, you might say. Reminds me of when I hiked in Dover, England on a blustery March day. Standing on a mossy precipice, I surveyed the lush green land, soaked from countless days of rain, the winds whipping my brown locks with such ferocity that I have not yet known existed. I felt as though I was at the center of something - not the universe, but some kind of natural occurrence, where I was a mere pawn to the whims of Mother Nature. I miss feeling such humility.

I traveled to Maine last weekend to feel loved and to recharge my spirit in a fresh, clean place. Home in a country village is one of best gifts I have been given. When life becomes serious and menacing, it is such a relief to have a refuge where you can know love and goodness, forces that heal your wounds or at least temper the pain and fortify your will to believe in life's many beauties. For they are surely there.

Image found here (via Sabino).