A Brief Reflection on Being Human in the Springtime

It is wet out this morning, but still I feel it is now done, over with, the land’s ritual of the spring run-off, the great gathering in and up of herself - water showing her excellent inclination to collectivity. Here, as winter gives way to spring, the snow discreetly retreats to the very edges of the woods, to the memory of the most hard-packed pathways. The melt waters carve small narrow channels, and those in turn join larger gullies of water, all running downwards to the ditches or nearby creek. Once churning with all of these many ephemeral arteries – pushing under, through and over the snow – the run-off is now peaceable, occasional, fed by light rains.

All this thawing, this coming to life – it is the great seasonal shift and awakening, a stirring of the lifeblood of the earth, but even at the very time it is in ascendancy, its lifelong companion, death and decay, is journeying right there along with it. I cannot help but prefer these in-between times, the release of winter but not yet the vibrancy of spring. Everything left damp brown and ochre, the melting snows laying bare last autumn’s rotted vegetation.

And there, at the edge of my yard, a beautiful dismembered birch limb brought down by wet, heavy snows. It rests on the still damp, decaying mats of aspen, birch and willow leaves, bringing to mind the traditional Scottish song Land o’ the Leal, its stirring words settling over the land like a prayer -

// I’m wearin’ awa’, John,
Like snaw-wreaths in thaw, John,
I’m wearin’ awa’
To the land o’ the leal. //

- Lady Nairne (Carolina Oliphant), 1798.

The thaw, that slow inexorable process of wearing away and final vanishing back into the earth, slipping in to those rotting mats of leaves, becoming one with something grander. How else, then, for ourselves to be fully human than to embrace this same the decay, this wearin’ awa?

Despite all the techno-obsession with anti-aging, with triumphing over disease, with bio hacks and blood boys (human hubris in the face of death being nothing new) I have a deep desire to understand how to sit with my aging, to experience it as part of something bigger than myself.

By now the greening up of the grass has begun, the exuberance of spring fed by the nutrients delivered by the rot and decay. I stop each morning by the downed limb of the old birch. She is the one that holds my laundry through the summer, saves her catkins for the partridges in the winter, gives shade to the red squirrels in the heat. I can feel her slow ebbing away. I try to learn from her, from her varied and lovely lichen companions.

There is something bigger. Something beyond and beautiful. I want to be able to know how to take my place within it, as a mammal, where I belong, to be going awa’ with my ancestors, my non-human kin, the aspen and birch, going awa’ to the Land o’ the Leal.

For more thinking or info:

https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/landotheleal.html

https://allpoetry.com/The-Land-O%27-The-Leal

I have been helped along greatly in my thinking by the genius of writer Elaina Foley in the following essay: Tenderness and Rot, or Why I Should Be Allowed to Burn Down the Peabody, April 3, 2022 https://sanantonioreview.org/2022/04/03/tenderness-and-rot-or-why-i-should-be-allowed-to-burn-down-the-peabody/

Also, if you like my writing, it would be great if you would consider picking up a copy of my latest novel The Haunting of Modesto O’Brien, about which a reviewer (Night Beats Extended Universe) said: “The only thing cooler than a gothic is an eco-gothic”.

You can pick up or order my book at your local, independent bookstore or direct from my publisher, Latitude 46: https://store.latitude46publishing.com/collections/featured-books/products/the-haunting-of-modesto-obrien

You might also be interested in my climate change trilogy The Wintermen also available for order from https://store.latitude46publishing.com/collections/fiction/products/the-winter-men