Spring Malaise

Spring officially begins in just a few hours, but spring time malaise has already set in here in the northern tundra. Perhaps this isn't something you suffer from and you whole heartedly buy into all the wonderful visions of new life springing forth from the earth, the cycle of life and cute baby animals coming forth into the world. If so, I'm willing to bet you live in far more temperate climes than I do. Here, we're still digging out from a couple of late winter snow storms which left nearly 20" of snow on the ground. Usually I can augment this ugly reality by tending to the tiny seedlings I grow for the garden each spring, but this year we are moving to Lord knows where at the end of April. Even if I knew that I was going to have a garden somewhere this summer, the poor seedlings wouldn't be fit for the trip. Sigh.
It's cliche to even say it, but God really has provided a great balm for our spirits in nature. I suppose I should just learn to enjoy the stark beauty and bracing chill of the long winter months, but I don't. It's just to darn cold. So by this time every year, I'm claustrophobic and sick of people. Even things I usually enjoy like politics, education and news are oppressive rather than intriguing. Everything weighs heavier without a warm sky to send cares up into.
Add in a terrible sinus cold I've been fighting off for the last week and a pregnancy which has become rather uncomfortable and I'm just all out of sorts. Heck, I haven't even found anything I'm real eager to pontificate about here for the last few days!
Ah well, like everything else, this will pass. Comfort is found in strange places and if we're open to it, it always seems to come. So, nothing real interesting today, but I'll leave you with this sonnet from William Wordsworth which seems particularly timely both for my spring time malaise and for the world at large:

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.