This morning dawned crisp and cold.  When I first stepped outside, I nearly regretted my sunrise hike plans with a friend and her dog. 

March is a tough time of year for people in the northern hemisphere.  It brings days that give a glorious taste of spring, with sun that warms and breezes that flutter by softly.  Then, within hours, the fickle weather will change, and we are piling back on the layers and grabbing the snow shovels yet again. The light finally comes sooner—and stays longer, especially after daylight savings time changes our clocks yet again.

This year, I keep falling into a mental comparison of spring and COVID.  Spring gives us teases of warmer weather to come… and then smacks us with the reality of winter’s hold.  COVID cases are going down but we are still losing more than 1,500 per day in this country… and yet the number of vaccinations is increasing greatly, sustaining our hope for better days to come. 

Even our hike up followed this theme.  Parts of the path held too much ice to be traversed safely, so we’d pick our way around, heading up a bit too far, only to work back down again to the trail after a few more steps out of our way.   

Yet still, we crested the hill and we again saw the sun faithfully bring us all into the next full day.  I start the day mentally crossing of my musings on going forward and backward at the same time.  I’ve only to look out to see that the gift of a new day is here.

In another time, we would have said it was too cold, too much of a bother to get our bed at that time of day, too hard to start our work days together.  But not now, not with a pandemic eliminating most of our other options for gathering.  I’m thankful for my silver lining today:  my reminder to focus on the promises for the future.