What a melancholy time of year! Winter has dragged on far too long, cold, grey and dispiriting. My cranky lungs have been giving me fits and I'm frankly sick to death of the interminable, frigid three-dog nights. (Three cats, at this house, but no matter.) Worse, my brain seems to have joined the smaller furry mammals in a protracted state of somnolescence, curled in a ball, its paw wrapped around its nose. 

Recently I dragged myself down into a state of sour pessimism about the prospects of the human race by reading a long, tortured memoir about World War I and its aftermath. The author's desperate hope for lasting peace, which she greatly needed in order to give meaning to the slaughter and sacrifice that annihilated a generation of young men in Britain and Europe, was already dwindling. Signs of rising fascism and a malignant desire for revenge on the part of the vanquished nations signaled preparations for the next great war by the time she was writing in 1933.  Sickened by humans' repeated insistence on reaping the whirlwind of  warfare,  I threw down the book and uttered that anguished, age-old cry of mothers and innate nurturers everywhere: "Why can't people just get along?" I would have thrown myself off the deck into a snowdrift at that point only I want to be a breathing, if brooding, presence at a family reunion a few days hence. 

The Chippewa called this raw, restless, in-between period in the seasonal turning of the great wheel "Big Winds Moon." It's a powerful, mysterious moon cycle, turbulent and often landscape-rearranging, as the earth gathers strength to undergo rapid growth changes once again. Just the other day, parts of Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Georgia blew off the map, right on schedule. Underneath the mantle of snow here in Wisconsin are pulsing energies, as yet invisible, which will bring on miraculous rebirth after the long period of death-like sleep, darkness and reflection ends. Sigh. It can't happen soon enough for me -- although I may sing a different tune when the storm winds roar and crack their cheeks here on the ridge as Big Winds Moon goes through its paces. We often have a front row seat for some very humbling weather. 

These March winds are literally the winds of change. That sounds like cheap political talk but a clean sweep, on the earth's surface as in politics, is potentially a good thing.  As we all know, without change there is stagnation and death.  On the other hand, steadfastness is also a value worth pursuing; hewing to what we think is right through thick and thin. The dilemma, I guess, is in knowing when we have chained ourselves to outmoded and self-defeating habits and when it is time to let go and trust something new that's blowing in the wind.  

One example that comes to mind immediately is the sustainability principles that many counties in this region are exploring as guides to a healthier, more habitable future for all their citizens. Turning loose of old habits will be hard, even crazy-making at times, but I trust that we will be filled with enough of the excitement that accompanies new learning to make the journey into the unknown a welcome one. As one of my old gurus wrote, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got." And many of us recognize that what we've got -- over-population, destruction of our natural life-supports, wars over scarce resources, disease-causing pollution, a widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots -- is scarcely what we want for ourselves, our kids, and posterity. 

Wind is a great stimulant, by turns destructive (as we know) but also the perfect tonic for fusty mental and physical torpor. I recall spring afternoons as a child, when, literally herded along by frisky blasts streaming up the canyon, great joy  bubbling up from somewhere deep in the core of my being as I was propelled forward. A certain kind of wind still has that power to tease and tousle my jaded emotions into a primal pleasure in being out doors, sharing the wind's buffeting with my sister chickadee and brother balsam fir. That suggests to me that no matter how cleverly we barricade ourselves behind glass, cement or other invented barriers, step outside and something in our DNA does a jazz dance, especially when the wind sets to spinning each tiny living particle. 
 

            "Very old are the woods;

            And the buds that break

            Out of the brier's boughs,

            When March winds wake... 

                        ~Walter de la Mare