It isn’t officially Spring on the calendar until next week, but today’s Weather God could care less what the calendar says – for it is surely spring today in Humptulips County. The sun is going in and out of a light cloud cover, and what the day lacks in temperature it makes up for in spirit.
The slightly hubristic quality of the Spring air has ushered in a new ambience for sound. Spring sounds have what Winter sounds lack, for they are individually more clearly heard and singly distinct while being intertwined in chorus; within an audio mix seemingly controlled by a master sound editor’s experienced hand, a master sound editor who somehow simultaneously enhances the sprightliness of each individual sound and the grandeur of resulting choruses. Each sound is distinct, but of a piece It is as if a group of players have finally come together in well-rehearsed combination following a winter spent practicing singly to hone individual skills.
But most importantly, this is the kind of day when I wish for long-lost friends to drop by unexpectedly and share their life stories with me; the kind of day when I want to be comforted by learning what they’ve made of their lot in life: their successes; their failures and losses, and the resulting lessons learned; their hopes and dreams for their remaining future; their level of acceptance of hopes and dreams no longer capable of being fulfilled; the emerging footprint they will temporarily leave on this earth until it fades into the fullness of yet another, after-death springtime; the possible footprints their children, and their children’s children, may temporarily leave in their turn.
No such long-lost friends have shown at the farm on this, the inaugural day of this Spring, and it is unlikely that any will physically do so before it ends. Therefore, memory – so singularly insufficient for my stated purposes – must somehow make do in their stead. For I am too far away in distance and in time for long-lost friends to think of me or of visiting, but I suffer no resulting melancholy because of this awareness. After all, it isn’t so much their physical presence that I desire today, as it is spring’s renewal of its ritual, annual blessing of the possibility they may yet come.
For this is spring and spring is all about possibility.
