Wild Afternoon Sky – Photo: L. Weikel

No Lamb Today

Without even going outside this morning, I could hear the runoff of melted snow coursing along the side of our road. Water rushed through a tunnel of compacted snow, amplifying the sound of its frenzied quest to join either the Tohickon or the Delaware, whichever was quickest and easiest to access. The sky was gray but the air was mild, content to simply do the job of melting winter’s whites. I truly thought I had this ‘first day’ pegged; but alas, March was no lamb today.

Oh sure, every once in a while the sun tried to push through and shake things up, but it was a heavy lift. The day just felt sort of blah.

Only when I had to run out to the post office in the late afternoon did I start rethinking my assessment. Snarling clouds were building in the west and I sensed a growing energy that felt distinctly leonine. I stopped by the creek to pay my respects and everything just felt dismal and swollen.

Swollen Tohickon – Photo: L. Weikel

Overflowing her banks – Photo: L. Weikel

Transformation

An hour later, Karl and I were heading out with Spartacus. The weather transformed before our very eyes. There was the barest hint that change was coming as we rounded the first corner. Those dark billowing layers of slate gray clouds had almost magically given way to a speckled sky of marshmallow puffs.

The longer we walked, the more dramatically everything shifted. Another mile under our belts and overhead the puffs poofed and their background of blue became the main event.

As we crested the final hill, the power behind the shift made itself known. We kept looking behind ourselves, thinking the whooshing sound we heard was an approaching car. But no, it was the wind, and that wind started buffeting us, moving us along, and most definitely ‘blowing the dust off’ our attitudes.

Speckled Sky of Puffs – Photo: L. Weikel

This Evening

As I sit here writing the title of this post, ‘No Lamb Today,’ the catalyzing wind has only become wilder and is making our normally melodious wind chimes clang vociferously. (I should probably bring them in.)  The lights have dimmed at least four times this evening, but we’ve mercifully been spared a complete loss of electricity. So far, anyway. It’s a wonder.

At the moment, it feels like the wind is angry and determined to root out and whisk away anything that isn’t grounded and in it for the long haul. Its roar is unmistakably declaring that March 2021 is coming in like a lion.

May it clear away the Covid! Help us all start fresh. It’s a new month – a month of new growth, of hope, of life returning to the surface of our consciousness. The month that brings us spring.

All in the span of two hours – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-270)