All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey
I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day
California Dreaming, Michelle Gilliam, John Phillips
Make no mistake, it is still winter in Humptulips County. As I write, we are in the teeth of a Pineapple Express which is drenching the West Coast, causing flooding from California to Washington. It is only February, after all, and we have not yet reached its midpoint.
Yesterday began in a deluge. It was one of those wintry weekend days when nothing outside calls for you to emerge from shelter, when the very thought of going outside holds no magic whatsoever, when the only attraction is the notion of a day spent sheltering in the company of a good book or a favorite movie accompanied by popcorn. We did both for much of the day, with chocolate chip cookies the perfect substitute for the popcorn we never enjoyed. I finished one book and began another by the same author, something (two in a row by the same author) I am usually loathe to engage in for its lack of variety, but a choice that somehow fit the cloistered mood of a gloomy day. A hedgehog couldn’t have felt more snug in its own burrow than I did on our living room couch, safe and warm in the lamplight.
By late afternoon, my only foray outside had been a quick, pajama-clad morning’s trip in the rain to refill our bird feeders.  When I climbed out of the fictional northern England by which I’d been enchanted, I checked the status of the feeders and noticed it was not raining for the first time. The weather had been such that the birds hadn’t yet flocked to the restocked feeders; the depth of its inclemency evidenced by the untouched layer of peanuts I’d left on top of each feeder for the jays.  The jays were hunkered down somewhere, unwilling to be enticed from cover even by the thrilling prospect of a daring theft of their favorite treat.
Inactivity due to pouring rain having been the order of the previous two days, I decided to go get the morning’s newspapers and the two days of mail left unretrieved in our rural mailbox while the rain-free opportunity persisted. I dressed carefully for a long walk in adverse conditions, and set out. When I got outside, it was no surprise that water was everywhere, fogging the air and pooling on the asphalt; it was a complete surprise that the day was warm and friendly, courtesy of a Chinook wind blowing in from the west.
As I walked, I found that if I turned my head so that I was momentarily freed of the wind’s constant susurration, scattered birdsong could be heard from all directions in unwinterly quantities and an unseen  tree frog was croaking a repeated, harsh greeting from somewhere on our driveway’s hillside.  In response to the warmth of the wind’s invitation, I unzipped the coat I had so carefully done up prior to leaving the house so that I might more intimately enjoy its caress. The space surrounding me was a bubble of spring on such a winter’s day; each small stirring around me seemed evidence of a primal restlessness – as if Persephone was sighing heavily in her winter boredom, ill content to be cloistered away in Hades and anxious for her annual romp in the sunshine to begin. But there was no sunshine to be enjoyed, only the first faint breath of spring barely perceivable in the midst of a watery world.
There was hope in that wind; its hints are sufficient for now.
