Winter, joyous in December with its candied lights, turns insidious come March. For most of the 31 days a gloomy prospect greeted us as we pulled back the curtains to reveal another day steeled in somber shades. The horizon blends snow covered field and darkened sky with little distinction between the two. One’s eye strains to take in the deep green in the wall of forest. One strains to see anything more than frigid terrain. One strains to keep going forward.

We faced a long stretch of gray skies this past month. A continuous icy wind whipped across snow banks and stabbed at our frozen hearts. In this world gone white we dream of variant hues. A patch of blue. Something fragrant. Something delicate. Something growing instead of the blowing desolation that hurries over barren fields or creeps atop rutted back roads until it lays still on the forest floor. That too. Stillness is all we hear. Hibernation claims us all.

Then it appears. That delectable blue. The light lengthens. The wind warms. Snow puckers under the strengthening sun. Melt fashions rivulets across the mud. A flock of robins alight into the thicket. Smiles spread from face to face. Day stretches into the evening hours. April begins.

The promise is renewed. The cycle of life continues. Our eyes raise higher. Gold is right around the corner.