Spring is my least favorite season. It took my Seasonal Celebrations colleagues a bit by surprise when I volunteered to write about our upcoming Equinox program. You see, as a person who mostly walks places (busing and biking as the weather permits) I know it’s the dirtiest and messiest time here in the northern part of Laurentia.* People often romanticize Spring as a season of immediate floral explosions, but let’s be real: before the blossoms, there is the muck.
As the clear and crisp air transitions into a damp and overcast gray, now is the stretch of the year where the snow has lost its purity and turned into soot-stained mounds of “snirt.” Even as we hope for a quick ICE out, we have a lot of cleaning up to do. The world feels stuck in this gray March stretch; the MSP civic mood feels similarly heavy. The meltwater and cold rain stay close to the surface before the ground warms enough for it to drain. I navigate large puddles on sidewalks and am deceived by earth that seems firm only to squelch into slippery mud.
This year feels especially sad, as I do not have a dog to walk with, and so my annoyance is not tempered by her joy. (Princess Barksdale did love the mud!) The ground is a soup of melted snow, dead leaves, soiled mittens lost 3 months ago, and the reminder that not all pet owners are super-responsible. There is a palpable sense of disgust in the air, and a collective weariness with the federal government. The headlines and the horizon are the same shade of muted gray. It is a “dark night of the soil.”
Yet still, to walk is to exercise faith when the landscape offers little evidence of beauty. We see only the brown, dormant hills, yet we walk knowing that the green awaits beyond what we can see. This is the messy part. The transition from a frozen, guarded state to an open porous one is inherently sloppy. We are currently in the thick of the “brown” period. The green grass isn’t yet visible, but it will come.
We walk because we have places to be, neighbors to check on, food donations to distribute. And we must dig out from the mess made in these last few months. There is much muck to trudge through, there are things to plant into that dirt, there are wild buds that will soon poke through.
Join us Sunday March 22nd. Welcome the spring! Come open to receive some seeds of hope and a warm community meal. FUS looks forward to walking with you though this muck and mud together. Galoshes recommended.
*Geologists use this term to describe our landmass as it has existed for billions of years, long before humans arrived, colonization decimated indigenous cultures, or borders were drawn. When discussing the continent’s movement through plate tectonics, scientists say “Laurentia” rather than “North America.”