Home Planet: Life has its own seasonal changes

The world around us is waking up.

Every day, every minute the sun shines and the temperature creeps up, the snow melts a little more. Streets that were narrowed by berms of gritty snow, reduced to one lane at the worst of the winter, are open again. Cars pass and joggers run along the side.

My driveway, just weeks ago a tight tunnel between two snowpacked lawns, is easy to navigate now. The path in front of my house is clear and wide. The steps, a bit scarred by the salt and the constant freezing and thawing, are no longer treacherous.

Winter is melting away and spring is coming, pushing tender green shoots up through the damp earth in the flower beds beside the front door. And, like every other living thing, I can’t help but feel the same pull.

I often talk to people who came to the Northwest from other places, where the sun shines most of the time and the weather is steady and predictable. Seasons glide by, marked mainly by holidays on the calendar and pictures on greeting cards. That was fine, they tell me. At first. But, they say, they began to long for hot, green summers and snow white winters. For autumn leaves that carpet streets and sidewalks and blustery springs that clear the air and sweep away the detritus of the last year.

“We wanted four seasons,” they say. So they moved to where they could experience a year that is divided into portions with different and dramatic personalities.

I think most of us want the same for our inner landscape. I know I do. I want a life filled with seasons, each with a distinct flavor and climate.

The thing about a life that changes and grows, a life that reaches and blooms at some times, or lies fallow and dormant at others, is that you have to be prepared to sacrifice comfort. Comfort is static and predictable.

Winter – the hardest of times – hardens us. It keeps us close to the ground and under wraps.

Spring wakes us up and pulls us out into the sun. It nourishes us and brings out the best in us.

Summer is when we play, when we worry less and relax more.

And autumn, the richest time of all, is when we show our true colors. When we harvest what we’ve sown. When we look back and look ahead. It’s when we take stock of what we have and what we’ve lost.

The official start of spring is just days away. The calendar on my desk lets me know what to expect from the world around me.

But it’s just as important to consult my inner almanac, the chart that guides the way I think and move and live,

Like so many of the region’s newcomers, I like living here. I like the way the year unfolds and occasionally makes me uncomfortable.

Inside me, it’s just the same. I know the year ahead will be filled with storms and sunshine. Cold and warmth. Life and death.

And from the moment I open my eyes in the morning, no two days will ever be the same.