I know real spring is a long way away, and that whatever bizarre season is upon us that’s making where I live nearly seventy-two degrees in February isn’t really spring, but the warm weather still stirs in me a feeling which, at the moment, I shall call nostalgia. The warm air and the smell of awakening earth harken back to times when those familiar aromas and sensations were related to something more tangibly freeing, as opposed to merely spiritually liberating.
As a recent graduate, part of me has had to come to terms with the joy of scheduling my life around something other than school. Whereas in the past the telltale signs of warming weather and longer days foretold the end of school and the start of that ever-important summer vacation; these days it does not. If anything, given the season nature of the wine industry, it’s the toll marking the start of the busy season. What break I enjoyed, the slowness of the cold weather that itself imposed upon me as much as it did free me from busier workdays, will soon fade at a time when others will be experiencing the simple joys I once did. That cycle is broken, and there is no returning to it.
This is not to say that I entirely dislike summer or spring- they’re much preferred to winter, but only that some of the childhood magic tied to these seasons is slowly evaporating however much my heart longs for their return. One has to adapt to these new cycles and find a way either to live within them or break free from them. Submit to the world or create your own. I tend to fancy the latter, although the temptation for blind recreation is strong and must be resisted. There’s no going back. There’s nothing and no one there anymore. There is only forward, and it is at once terrifying and sublimely fascinating.
So, on one of my days off, I took a long, wandering hike alongside a favorite patch of fishing river in my new surroundings. There were insects flickering in strands of sunlight. Although I gave a few half-hearted casts into the water, and received a couple of strikes in return, my heart wasn’t in it. I was there for something else. Fishing is never just about fishing.
A patch of sunlight, a tree to rest my back against, and a warm rock overlooking the flow of the river. I set an alarm on my phone for half an hour, and let go of it all for a bit. It was a new kind of magic, the beginnings of a path forward. I can’t recapture the feelings and memories of springs and summers past, but perhaps I can create new moments of the same value.
Part of me hopes that will be enough.
