Daryl Wood's Blog

This morning as I trudged along my wake-up walk with woodpeckers hard at work and songbirds joining the sunrise, I heard an unmistakable sound – a loon calling. It’s the first I’ve heard this year and it stopped me in my tracks. The sound is so melodic and reverberates across the water. It is associated with the “wild” and untamed land. And, sometimes, I attach a meaning to that first call. Spring is here.

I wonder why many of us place such much importance on spring. Where I live, there are four distinct seasons. They may blend in and out with us trying to figure out which one we are in (especially when we get heavy rain on a January day when snow is mounded several feet around us). In any case there are times when I observe the sign of change and today, that’s the sound of loons in the bay.

To me, spring means new beginnings, growth, fresh air, fresh starts. As I’ve written about before this can happen any day and yet it feels significant when something like the loon call says “Hey, nature is starting fresh.” I simply can’t resist the urge to follow suit. Maybe my internal rhythm is more “natural” than I imagine. Maybe tuning in to how much I am in sync with the environment around me would help me to shift into new ways of being. Perhaps, today is another of those pivotal moments when I get to reinvent my life, grab onto something I’ve been avoiding or to just fully embrace what I have been blessed with.

Spring and loons are so complimentary. Spring and blossoming, growing, re-birthing, possibilities and opportunities are also synonymous. As I marched steadily around the damp moss and fallen twigs I saw the tiny, precious shoots of new grass and buds. When I arrived back home I stared hard into the mirror and saw with pleasure the obvious signs of life renewed. I wonder if I would have seen them if I hadn’t been looking. Imagine how different today might be if each of us took a good long look at the possibilities and opportunities that are written all over our faces.

Imagine.