The older I get, the longer each winter seems to last. When I was a younger man, the onset of winter was an inconvenience, but not an impediment, to going outdoors and enjoying the fresh air. Yes, it was cold, and I had to gear up appropriately, but I would venture out for hours on end without apparent consequence. Not so now that I’m middle aged.

While I still venture out from time to time, those experiences are shorter in duration and certainly spaced farther apart, than in years past. I no longer have that “inner walrus” of stored energy to tide me over while I’m out in the cold. Within a few hours, I’m often chilled to the bone and anxious for the return to my warm hearth and a hot cup of coffee.

The dark days of winter also seem to take more of an emotional, and not just physical, toll on me now as well. I’m sure the shortened hours of sunlight in those crisp winter days add to that feeling. With the limited hours of natural sunlight, winter days are often like trying to read in a dimly lit room. You can do it, but it’s a chore, and you just don’t get the full impact of the story you’re trying to read and your mind keeps searching and probing for just enough light to keep going and turn another page. It can be mentally exhausting, at least for me.

It dampens my sense of the present, and hopes for the future. There is a natural sense of doom and foreboding in the dark. In a darkened room, or forest, you can’t take more than a few slow, small, steps at a time. The natural space, though the same size as when fully lit, appears smaller in your perception, and you spend so much time and energy trying to visualize what you can’t fully see that you often aren’t able to fully relax and contemplate much beyond your immediate surroundings and environment. There is no room for hope, or thinking of the future beyond. It’s very limiting, physically and emotionally. For me, winter is much like those darkened spaces. I survive, but I don’t thrive.

But then comes springtime. The first few glimpses occur in mid-February, when the sunlight remains just a little longer in the afternoon, and there are usually more than a few days above freezing, here in my area of the Midwest. Just driving home from the office with the sun just setting, as opposed to the darkness of early January, makes the world seem just a little brighter. By the first of March, it’s often daylight until early evening (albeit very early evening), and there is a hint of the brightness to come in the day when I first wake in the morning. No more waking up in the dark, and coming home in the dark. Relief at last, and just in time, it always seems.

It comes every year, and I’m grateful for it, each and every year. It may be a cliche, but it’s true – Springtime is a time of hope. With the longer days, full of sunlight and the freshness that comes from the snow melting and once again revealing this wonderful world we live in, I can breathe. I again feel the inner energy to have hope, no longer having to expend all of my energy just trying to decipher the contents and confines of my small dark space. We need that light that comes every year. We need it to thrive, and not just survive. Spring is here, and there are future plans to for one to dream, once again.

Copyright 2021 by D. James Clark — all rights reserved