Reawakening

Birdsong sweetly finds its way into my dreams, on a breeze through the window left ajar through the night. Half closed eyes and that hint of spring in my nostrils. Flowers opening. Bees sleepily visiting, waking from long winter hibernations, a lone buzz on a cool sunny morning. Stepping outside, feet bare on freezing flags, but squinting against the sun and feeling hope on the wind.

This spring is pulling me forward, one step in front of the other, quickening from the doldrums of last year. I broke connection with the land and space around me over those months. Retreat, stillness, languishing in some unknown torpor. I stayed in and didn’t walk the land. Rhythms of water and moorland beat unheard. I slowed, silenced, stayed away. I drew into myself, and didn’t know why. But now this spring unfurls me, and I feel like stretching to the sky.

It was observation, watching, waiting for the future to pull me forward. Time weaver, tired from straddling the past and present, the raging ocean, the dark whirlpool of memory. But after the storm there is calm. In the moment we may not know why. But last year I finally trusted the process. My world shrank and helpless, I let it. In that surrender there is healing.

I blink in the bright light, and true, 12 months mostly indoors will do that. I feel a pull to the land once more, walking my old paths, following the old ways back to something that is me but newer. With the rising sun comes a relentless possibility, and small smile to the sky, that first ray of light after a long winter. I feel the awakening in my cells, in my soul. I breathe in and fill my lungs with that fresh, timid air of the first days of the changing season.

The darkness was needed, the months away from the land, the breaking of a connection so it can grow anew. Isolation, time away, space to process and trust and surrender to the turn of the earth. But there was no nourishment, no soul-searching, no rest. I ran myself down, working too hard, losing myself in scrolling, spending agonising hours inside my mind in spirals and twists and turns. It taught me what I didn’t want. And in turn, all the truth remains. The storm retreats. Everything is shiny and new, ready and waiting.

I raise my arms and welcome in the spring.