Paul and I return from a Saturday afternoon walk. The sun is warm on our faces, the stream crashes down the mountain, released from its frozen captor. The snow banks, shoved back by the plow dwindle, sprouting strange snow sculptures, sprinkled with dirt and rising like Northern Stonehenge. Robins flap past each other to mushy puddles then flit quickly back into the safety of trees. Early spring makes us call out each time we see one, the quintessential marker of the season. I turn my face to the sun while we walk, the new warmth still a novelty. I notice that the blue of the sky has taken on a warmer tone, no longer distinctly winter. We walk in light jackets and hold hands without gloves. The heavy tread of our Mucks steady our steps as we maneuver undulating tire paths Our dogs run ahead of us, racing each other and splattering their undersides with mud. Like children, they delight in any kind of open water and charge into the stream for an ice cold drink.
We reach our woodshed and fill our arms with wood to toss into the wood box in the house. The days may be warming but the nights are still dropping into the teens. I step tentatively, the path to the house obscured with thawing mud which is terribly slippery. The stones of the walkway are visible but only through standing water. We not so much walk as scuff along pushing dirty waves off to the side. I begin to experience mud-fatigue: I didn’t feel this a week ago when fat snowflakes fell covering the muscles of tree branches like white sleeves. There was magic in that snowfall. It is hard to dig magic out of the mud.
We have decided to travel again for the first time since the pandemic began. For many years if we were fortunate enough to be able to travel, we would choose April to go. Missing a week of mud season makes for perfect timing. This year we are headed to Scotland: a trip that we have both always wanted to make. What calls us are the dales, the stones, the heather, and the history. I feel excited but apprehensive and as I tell my kids, it is one of those “happy-sad” things. Rarely do we experience anything with just one emotion. There is always an equal and opposite one, like in physics, expressing itself in the deep of the night.
Light packers, we are ready, willing and able to toss a week and a half worth of clothes into a carry-on bag. We have details on when to leave, where to stay and how to get to where to stay. We don’t want to plan too much because we will have packed serendipity to arrive with us. So the feeling doesn’t seem to be as much about the going as the leaving.
I wake up too early and begin to make lists in my brain for Josh who will be farm/dog/house sitting. Two sheep and our fourteen year old dog need to be hand fed medications: what if they won’t take them from him? We lost a hen last week. Does he know how to handle hen burials? Dogs need running, humidifiers need filling, and my plants. What about my plants? I have found perfect places for them all, I’m intuitive about watering so they are upright, green and happy. I have a grow light on the shelf of the kitchen, our winter garden. There is a big clay pot of basil that I pinch for sauce and a blue ceramic planter that has an Einstein mop of Rosemary spilling from it. Tulips are bursting from bulbs on the counter and an Easter Lily rises from the island in the kitchen. Josh nods regularly and vaguely, and says “yep” enough times that he thinks I’m assured he will water well. I’m not.
While I am here, it feels better to stay here. It is familiar here. I like it here.
Paul reminds me of how it feels to finally sit in a plane and climb above your cares to begin an adventure together. You cannot worry about dogs, sheep, chickens or Einsteinian rosemary when you are far, far away. They will be on their own. And, I begin to remember fondly, so will we.