In one of Elizabeth Strout’s stories in Olive, Again a character remarks on the quality of February light. “What she would have written about was the light in February.  How it changed the way the world looked.  People complained about February; it was cold and snowy and oftentimes wet and damp, and people were ready for spring.  But for Cindy the light of the month had always been like a secret, and it remained a secret even now.  Because in February the days were really getting longer and you could see, if you really looked.  You could see how at the end of each day the world seemed cracked open and the extra light made its way across the stark trees, and promised.”

The promise of spring is all around if you look carefully, past the grey days and the occasional flurry of snow.  One day you will walk past the same bank of willows and suddenly they seem to glow golden with an inner light and the red osier dogwoods flame a blood scarlet.  The great horned owls who began calling back and forth in the twilight last month are already nesting. And beavers, coyotes and foxes are all mating. As are the hairy and downy woodpeckers and flickers whose drumming fills the morning quiet. Even the hardy little chickadees are practicing their mating calls.

 The ground is scattered with wind blown seeds already softening in the wet snow, just waiting to drop down into the dirt and germinate.  Even beneath the ragged snowcover, in the subnivean layer, voles who torment you in the summer garden are reproducing.  And as more sunlight filters through, plants have begun to grow. Newly hatched stoneflies are crawling over the snow and in their dens mother bears have already given birth. 

The ancient Celts recognized the beginning of spring, on the first of February, the Cross Quarter, half way between the Solstice and the Equinox.  To them it was Imbolc or Brighid.  For me, this light of February is a bittersweet light.  I am reluctant to see the end of winter.  Every new snowfall now is a celebration, a chance to savor for a few more days the quiet, contemplative beauty of a winter’s day.  But these last snowfalls are fleeting, giving way to the slush and blue skies of longer days and warmer weather and all around me are the reminders of the changing seasons

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