Tonight is the eve of Ostara, the spring equinox. Light and Dark, Day and Night are in perfect balance.
It’s comforting to be reminded that Mother Earth is still spinning at an appropriate distance from the sun and on her appropriate axial tilt, as she has done for lo these many millennia. Comforting that our star is still exploding furiously, constantly, exquisitely at the heart of our little solar system.
It is unfortunate, however, that Mother Nature is out of balance. Big time. Same as the weirdly unnatural socio-political-economic existence we’ve created for ourselves is out of balance. Part and parcel, if you ask me.
Where I was raised, the saying “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb” was apt. So, too, was “April showers bring May flowers.” Summer was beach weather, with occasional thunderstorms. The wind turned brisk, and multi-colored leaves fell in the fall. Winter holidays were a white delight. By February, we’d had it up to here with the slick, dirty, hoary slush of December’s degraded snows. For all that its weather was famously changeable, Chicago in the 1950s and 60s was steadfast in its adherence to the classic, adage-honored seasonal shifts.
It’s a sure bet the Windy City manifests no such consistency today. Worldwide, the weather has gone from unpredictable (its normal state) to wildly out of whack.
March in Northern California, for example, used to be cool but comfortable, wet, and very green. In 1980, when Roy and I decided to get married at spring equinox – outdoors in Berkeley’s John Hinkle Park (go ahead, click the link) – we knew we were taking a crazy big risk. Sure enough, in the run-up to the wedding, the storms were with us and the luck against us. The Bay Area was deluged with rain for two days prior to the big event and it poured the night before.
Ah, but Blessed Be, the day appointed dawned clear and bright, birds sang out, flowers nodded in the spring breeze … a glorious day for a handfasting.
Today, temps in Berkeley reached a high of 900F / 320C.
Spring has always come “early” to Northern California. (It was never early. It was right on time for a Mediterranean climate.) Garden planning and prep happens in January/February. Apricots start blossoming late February/early March. By Ostara, you’ve already got your tomatoes in the ground.
While all my Nor-Cal gardening friends are sticking to the schedule, they’re doing it out of habit. Wildlife has been responding to the actual climate conditions, which means my patient friends have been seeing impatient ladybugs and bumblebees in their yards for two months, and bushes were in flower before some folks had their Yuletide decorations put away. Imbolc thought it was Ostara. The last full moon was Bealtaine-esque. And today sent at least one of my Sonoma County friends to San Francisco’s Ocean Beach to cool off.
Lhude sing cu-cu, and all that. Wolcum, Sprummer! – the season that should be spring, but is definitely summer. Cuckoo, fer reals.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, my little corner of the world is stuck in Sprinter – the season that should be spring, but is definitely winter.
Our winter-winter was a doozy. In contrast to the warmer-than-usual winter experienced by the rest of the nation, Dec-Feb temps in Western New York State were the lowest in a decade. The ground stayed snow-covered for the entire season (we typically get several “bare ground” winter breaks). December 2025 was Rochester’s snowiest in 15 years. Syracuse scored its second highest snowfall in recorded history. And January delivered WNY both an award-winning high of 61oF/160C and an award-winning low of -40F/-200C.
All the locals agree – this winter was just like winter when they were kids. Before global warming impinged on our reality. Before it became so impactful that we could no longer dismiss or ignore it.
We’re past winter-winter now, but it’s still not spring. When the snow melts away, the ivy shows green. That’s about it, vegetation-wise. I’m not seeing buds, let alone flowers. And then it snows again.
I did see a robin, though. Twice. On warmer days, birdsong fills the morning air. The chipmunks have re-appeared (and then re-disappear when the temp drops). Geese and ducks are owning the skies, swans are floating on the ice-cleared bay, young deer are foraging in our backyard … around here, the harbingers of spring are the critters, not the flowers. (I’ve been notified that one must use the word “harbinger” at least once in any post referencing the onset of spring: it’s Blog Law.)
In times like these, it’s hard to set the sorrows and horrors of the world aside and simply BE, simply breathe in beauty and wonder, and breathe out peace and gratitude. The rise of authoritarianism bears a lot of the blame. For me, a form of survivor’s guilt exacerbates the stress. It’s sheer luck, an accident that I am who I am, that I live where I do. That I’m not enduring war, persecution, family separation, starvation, or imprisonment. That I’m not on a despot’s target list.
Marking the turning of the Wheel of the Year, celebrating the seasons each in turn is, for me, a way to stay human, stay sane, stay open to others’ pain and distress, and to find my balance again for a hot minute. So is watching the stars spin about in the heavens. Hearing the song of the wild geese. Walking out to Irondequoit Beach’s wee lighthouse to gaze across Lake Ontario to Canada’s hidden shore.
Seeing the year’s first robin.
For you it might be letting the sound and salt and sight of the ocean rush over you, through you, and return a small part of you to the sea. Taking a run along a spring-waking canal. Planting tomatoes. Gaming with friends. Going to a concert. Finding flowers full-open to the sun.
Yes, I do have a poem for you this Ostara Eve, but again copyright compels to share it with a link. It’s Remember by Joy Harjo.
Thanks for the read (blog and poem, both), and may all the blessings of the season (spring, sprinter, sprummer, whatever) be yours.
The place where I do my karate workouts does not have air-conditioning. Usually doesn’t need it. But wow was I sweating Wednesday night.