I have neglected my writing for the majority of spring. This blog, untouched since the end of March. Only a few more words have made their way into the pages of my two manuscripts, but I have not been entirely fallow, nor has the life around me. In my backyard, “No Mow May” has turned into a meadow filled with color and noise. During the day, the pollinators dance among the whispered seeds of dandelions before they sink their bodies into the violet petals of self-heal. Bees, so many bees, emerging out of this wild yard with pockets of gold tucked into their hind legs. When the sun hides behind the hemlocks, the wood frogs take over, and dusk becomes a mating song.

In the front yard, the sea roses have intoxicated June, and me, pulling us into summer almost too suddenly. Spring always manages to run ahead of me, overwhelming, but it is still my favorite season. When I lose hope in humanity, I turn to the garden and search its wonderland.

It can be difficult to slow down when nature propels us towards the sun. I can feel the effects. Fatigue urges a pause, and so I sit down to write. Finding the centering solace of words. We create not to produce, but to come home. Our art is our individual origin stories. It brings us back to our essence. Here we find ourselves, again.

In my yard, nature sings our shared origin story and spreads wide the senses in a canvas of color, sound and scent that brings my body to a place of homeostasis when I allow the stillness of presence. It is the time when our Mother welcome us back into her warm embrace to find our center.

This is not an easy time in our shared history, but few times have been easy since we lost sight of our origin stories and began to cling to the heady thrust of power and greed. Rapid growth is not always advantageous, in fact, it rarely is. Anything that disrupts the natural rhythm of life creates chaos. This is when our origin stories become dystopians of corruption. Through a screen smaller than a slice of bread we can watch the world falling apart, sending our senses into overload. The heartbeat becomes erratic, the breath held shallow before it is released. That is no way to thrive.

Yet, we cannot entirely escape it, even if we turn off the device. We are, unavoidably, a part of it. One strand of the web weaves into the over, even if the strands are made from inorganic elements. We cannot escape our connection, but we can change the density of it. When adjust the force of its pull and free ourselves of at least some of its tangles, it is easy for us to access the center. There is no better time than spring to sort through the false trappings of life and find our way home again. It can be as simple as bringing our bodies with all of our senses engaged back to the earth. One bare foot, followed by the other, leading us back to our origin.