I make no effort to hide the fact that the change in seasons always make me pensive, but sometimes sorting through all of the thoughts that result from flipping the calendar day to the next one make me wallow in possibilities. It does not help me that I started this post on the first day of Spring during the second part of my Spring Break, a time when I consciously tried to engage in activities that I do not have time to participate in during the rest of the semester. Some of those actions seemed like the choices of a desperate man, but I spent most of my time that week parked on the couch reading and writing far too many hours of the day. Even as disconnected from humanity and reality as I became during those days, my mind still noticed the gentle shift from winter to spring that March always embodies by bombarding me with images I still need to find ways to incorporate into my own life. My despondency right now is likely a byproduct of several losses in my personal life—no, nothing mortal or fatal or even remotely real, even—that have me reflecting on what future I can build. This time of the year sometimes makes me feel adrift even if I am rarely alone, floating and waiting for something new to stop my progress. I know that I should not live in this way, but I have entered one of those periods of transition in my life that I did not know to expect. People often assume that “periods of transition” can only be negative times in our life, and doing so can taint what might otherwise be beautiful experiences we may never see again. Spring usually requires me to make decisions about the upcoming months, the summer beyond, and sometimes the end of a year that I have hardly begun to fathom. These choices have assaulted me again this year like every year, yet I also feel like I am in a position to plant seeds for periods long after the next several months. In order to lay the groundwork for success later, I need to be sure that I find fertile soil in which to place those seeds. To that end as I envision the next chapter of my life, I tell myself that I am looking for the proper part of the world to plant the garden that I keep envisioning—my garden of dreams.
No one in my life has ever described me as risky, and I am quite fine with that assessment. I have chosen options that present me with unique opportunities when I feel like I need a change in my life, but these bold choices represent the exception in an otherwise quiet life of assured possibilities. No, I am not using this post as a way to announce that I am giving up everything in my life to take up a position somewhere else doing something other than my love of the education systems I have served now for a decade—even if a coworker recommended recently that I read Dharma Bums as an introduction to Kerouac, and I did go out and grab a copy—but the change in weather always has me reflect back a year so that I can anticipate where I will be a year from now. This year was the first year that I have not been able to guess what the Spring of the next year will look like, not only because I was wrong this past year but also because so much about our world is uncertain at this time. Some of that unpredictability is the loam that feeds the fertility of the upcoming seasons, yet an ever-increasing portion of that uneasiness I feel comes from the fact that the institutions that I once hoped would remain a major part of our world are under attack at many levels from many enemies.
To try to combat some of that uncertainty, I decided to document the first time I noticed a few aspects of spring that are always important to me. For example, I always notice when I see the first fringes of leaf buds appear on the trees, but I never thought to record when I first saw them appear. This year the first day I saw them appear was March 29th, and now I feel the obligation to compare that date to the next year and the next. Another metric I often take part in is the search for frogs, eggs, and their tadpoles. This practice usually involves walking around on wet nights and looking in the busy creases of the world to find these lovely friends, but I almost always go weeks before finding any examples. Although I did not find the type of frog I had hoped to see, I still found another species (pictured below) on April 3rd, which tells me that we have truly entered this period of growth that bolsters me every year.
I set these and other memories aside like seeds so that I might create the possibility for an abundant future. Sometimes we know that outside conditions might influence our growth, sometimes even unfairly, but like stubborn weeds we can also refuse to be reduced solely to products of our environment. I have to be optimistic in order to see the possibilities of my future garden of dreams in my life, because when we prepare these spaces, we never do so in order to keep them as they are. Gardens are beautiful due to the fact that they grow and expand beyond what they initially are—and they often do so in unexpected ways. Both my students and I are stressed during this busy season by the many activities that require our attention to finish up the academic year, but I will recommend to them what I recommend to them during the rest of the year, during those times when things are collapsing and burning around us, during the good times and the bad times: Do some writing. It really does help.
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