Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota

The ice was groaning with dull bass "ka-thunks," and the sun was warming the porch suggesting all kinds of Spring feelings.  At the Ely Eucharist several people announced the arrival of Spring; I was somewhat skeptical fearing that high hopes can quickly be deflated with rain, sleet and wet, blowing snow.

The landscape was particularly dull.  Brown dominated.  There were brown grasses, brown bushes, brown dirt and roadsides, and brown leaves blown around brown ground from leafless brown tree branches.  This was tamarack time.  What could be more austere than the solitary tamarack standing in the grown muskeg with its needleless and twiggy skeletal branches shifting in the March winds?

"Son of man, can these bones live?"  Only the spruce, cedar and pine broke through with hints of green, and even they could only hint because the dry brown had encroached into their evergreen fiber.

"Can these bones live?" "You know Lord."  This is gestation time!  The burden of Spring weighs heavily while waiting for just the right time.  The buds are full and beginning to soften.  The pussy willows showing white are portents of the green to come.  Suddenly in the blink of an eye, in the flash of blinding energy, in a time that we usually see only by hindsight, the landscape will have changed, and the rush of life will be full speed ahead.

But now I wait, kicking my way through dried up leaves and building brush piles for a Winter fire. I do have Easter in mind, but Easter in this country is like the white of the pussy willows; it shows long before Spring.  Our claims of "He is risen" will be part of the chorus of groaning ice and brown branches shifting in the winds, as we continue to wait in full expectation for the dead to be raised again

Other titles in this series:

• Fall
• Winter
• Easter II
• Spring

• American Widgeons, originally written 1997 for the East Range Epistle.
• Clearing Land, originally written 1997 for the East Range Epistle.
• Dogs, originally written in 1999 for the East Range Epistle
• Good Friday and Trees, originally written in 1998 for the East Range Epistle
• Michigan Sand, originally written in 1998 for the East Range Epistle
• Rivers, originally written in 1996 for the East Range Epistle.
• Skiing Burntside, originally written 1997 for the East Range Epistle.
• Snow Trails, originally written 1997 for the East Range Epistle.
• The Singing River, originally written 1996 for the East Range Epistle.
• Winter Trails, originally written 1997 for the East Range Epistle.

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