Peaceable Man Files #62: Hope Springs Eternal

Random musings on my vagabond existence in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania and wherever else life takes me.

Tomorrow is the official start of Spring and there is still snow on the ground at our property in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. All the seasons run late behind up here with the exception of winter, which arrives early and lingers well into April.

It’s enough to make any sane man move to Florida to enjoy his retirement. But no thank you. I love the change of seasons and will take the cool weather over the heat and humidity any day. Besides, after a winter like the one we just had, spring is all the more glorious.

Despite the recent snowfall, I can feel the change happening. The back of this brutal winter has been broken. The days are growing longer. It’s now light until seven-thirty in the evening. The temperature plunges into the twenties at night but rises into the upper forties during the day.

I wake to the swell of birdsong outside my bedroom window. The grass is greening up. I spot robins on the lawn. The trees and bushes burn red with swelling buds.

I can smell the change happening, too, that delicious, musky aroma of the earth unlocking from the grip of winter. I smell worms—hence, the robins pecking on the lawn—and the thaw of decomposing leaves and compost.

It’s a scientific fact that we smell more in warmer weather. Our nostrils constrict in the cold, closing off our ability to smell deeply. Cold air molecules also are denser and move slower than those in warm air, which means fewer scents to reach our nostrils.

Spring is more than a change of season. It is a renewal of the spirit in which all of our senses are engaged. This is why Lent takes place in the leadup to spring. We move from darkness to light, from death to life, from despair to hope.

As I walk the property with Cassie, I feel my spirit lifting like the sap rising in the trees. There is so much to look forward to. Getting out on the streams to do some fly fishing. Watching the Phillies on TV (hopefully with a better result than last year). Opening the doors and windows and letting the fresh air inside. Sitting out on the deck enjoying the sun.

Human beings need things to look forward to. Unlike our fellow creatures whose existence is entirely bound within the present moment, we live in the past, present, and future. We are haunted by memories of past hurts as well as the certainty of our mortality and the suffering that will come with it.

I consider it something of a miracle that our human psyche can deal with such uncertainty. Which is why we need hope. Hope is uniquely the province of human beings. It is as important to our existence as food, water, and shelter.

We need to know that whatever difficulties we are going through today won’t last forever. That even death is not an end. We find that hope in faith and prayer, in community, in our relationships and social connections, in nature, in Nature, in service to others, in fun activities like fishing and baseball.

The more fonts of hope to drink from, the better, in my book. Why? Because life is so incredibly hard. It’s wonderful and hard at the same time.

It's important, I think, that we actively cultivate this quality of hopeful expectation. It's as important to our happiness as food, water, and shelter. Henry David Thoreau called this quality “infinite expectation.” In his book Walden, he put it this way:

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep." 

An infinite expectation of the dawn. Yes, that's it exactly.

So after a hard winter, I am luxuriating in the arrival of Spring, especially knowing that I’m getting older and I don’t have many Springs left.

I’m going to make the most of the ones I have left. I hope you do as well.

Jim