I went out for a walk this morning, the first one in a while. The trail is just on the far side of winter now, right on the doorstep of spring. I could almost hear the nettles pulsing their fresh green heads beneath the mud. Another week? Two?

For our Northern Hemisphere ancestors, late February would have been a hungry time, the cold damp deep in the bones, the winter stores gone or withered of their vitality. I imagine some long-ago ancestress scanning the fields and woods for that first flash of green, the first sign that nourishment was coming. I live a very different life, but I find myself harboring the same February ache, searching my own fields for something fresh and life-giving. You too?

I made the rounds the other day online, doing my civic duty to stay informed and aware, and I wondered if the news has ever been such a late-winter place, full of muck and weariness. I came away spattered with our local version, a sneering kind of mud, supercilious and cynical, that clings to the mind long after.

I have to be careful with that kind of thing, because cynicism and superciliousness come too easy to me. Writing has been a way to resist it, to grow, by the force of words, something green and hopeful within myself. I wrote myself a note that day: You are not an outrage factory.

I keep thinking of something Barry Lopez wrote about his friend, Brian Doyle, whose life and work mentors me constantly:

You were … the example that keeps us from despair, cynicism, detachment, and the other poisons bred in the bowels of our complex lives.

You walked in beauty, my dear friend. We all watched.

And now it is our turn.

(So. You are not an outrage factory. You are a lamp, made to be filled with light, a bowl of herbs, pungent with healing, a circle of arms for welcome. Your eyes are made for far-seeing and uncovering hope. This, this, this, is you.)

A handful of things from the week:

H/T: Rachel

~ This post from Susan about where writers work. Some lovely and inspiring photos. (Wendell Berry {happy sigh.} And despite my love for huge bookcases, Nigella Lawson’s space is giving me a bit of claustrophobia!)

~ Saturday’s full moon is the Snow Moon, the last full moon of winter. I’m going to make something simple for dinner, in keeping with the late-winter theme. (Maybe a nightshade-free version of colcannon and some sausages? I might splurge on dessert though.) If the weather cooperates, we’ll spend some time under the moonlight. <3

~ Exploring the work of Caroline Shaw after reading about her in The Atlantic. Here’s a nice introduction.

I’ll leave you with something from Brian Doyle:

The coolest most amazing people I have met in my life, I said, are the ones who are not very interested in power or money, but who are very interested in laughter and courage and grace under duress and holding hands against the darkness, and finding new ways to solve old problems, and being attentive and tender and kind to every sort of being, especially dogs and birds, and of course children.

Let’s hold hands against the darkness, shall we?

tonia