Daffodill weather

The storms come and go. Today the wind blows cold, and the sun rests between thick gray clouds, like a feather mattress and a down comforter. The sun is fickle, and has not yet decided whether tomorrow she will get out of bed, and let us feel her heavy warmth on our faces, or if she will continue in her dramatic pause. These indecisions of the sun, make the air grumpy. She sighs vehemently and we are surrounded by fog. At our feet it is misty and we only notice if we take the time to look down and observe it resting, nestled between the roots of the trees.

It is dense, however, on the top of the mountain, where driving up, up is like driving into the clouds. If you don't pay attention you'll miss that place, in between clarity of vision and blindness, where you can see the bottom, but not the top of the forest surrounding you. In that moment you have a choice. You can turn around, go back down to where it is easy to see, or you can keep going, and eventually make it to the place you intended.

If you don't pay attention, and are not sure where you are going, you find yourself lost. But if you notice the tops of the trees disappear, you can see ahead of time, the lights on the road disappearing into the white blindness. And then, even when you can barely see beyond the windshield of your car, and the lights look like they are not lit beyond the one directly ahead of you, you have faith that if you can just make it to that little light, the next one along the path will become visible, and you can follow them out of the fog.

The clarity of vision hits you again, and even though the sun is sleepy she still seems brighter than anything you've ever seen. And if you remember to look up again, you will see the tops of the trees, lost at first, disconnected from their own trunks, become visible again. You look around you and the world is again as it was before. There is still snow on the ground in patches, and there is still a fine mist lying over the ground like a tissue on the floor. But if you can observe a little way down the road, daffodills bloom at the edge of the gravel.