It’s a winter night as I write this.  Spring is a little way off – tantalising but, for now, still out of reach, as if its very closeness is another form of trial.  It does not need saying it’s been wet.  Or that, tonight at least, the forecast stretches indeterminable as far as the forecast will go.  Is this the time to look for fortitude, to bang on grand-eloquent in the face of the onslaught of rain that we’ve seen?  Certainly, we take sucour where we can.  Is it enough to think that Spring is now just a matter of weeks in the waiting?

Some things at least can stay perennial; the early flowers like promises reminding us all is not lost, that – even if we can’t predict exactly what may be in store – we know the earth will tilt enough to bring warmer, longer days, some sense of opportunity, of time to be won, of the knowledge there is much that we can do.  Our choices then can simply be pragmatic; we can try and ignore the weather and woes of the world, or give into despondency, despair.  Or, perhaps uncoupled from relentless media for a time, we can try and stay practical; to keep our houses in order and seek to spread this out, like lights against obscurity, like boats on an unfamiliar sea.

The alternative is to bow to the clouds, stumble in bewilderment counting out the things we cannot change or cannot yet do so like fathoming miles in the dark.  Sometimes it’s enough to just mark one staging post at a time, conscious perhaps of big pictures and yet putting them out of our mind, like harnessing all our reserves as if the next few weeks are the last miles of an already long day and that, for now, we only need think of immediate shelter, face our full tomorrows other days.  We can fix our attention upon a fixed point, be it distant or near and ignore the complaints of our legs as we make way towards it; as we forget, if you like, almost every other thing than simply going forward for a time, knowing there will be some kind of respite.

We know there are no guarantees unless they be the belt of a will for survival, of the grand and possibly largely untapped forces of collective will; that, seeing all the clearer our predicaments, we can be that much more primed to dig for resources, to fathom the depths of our mental reserves, calibrate the heights of our potentials.

As others have said, in darkness our dreams burn the brighter.  Our dreams and our dreaming can serve as a beacon as well.  In the meantime, we can set our minds and our faces to the weather, stride out in it as if bloodymindedly, seek the signs and support of our fellow travellers, knowing that we face all this together and in that there can be a sense of consolation, the knowledge of some kind of solidarity, shared endeavour certainly, even a kind of grand conspiracy against some of the things we may face. 

At this time of the year, I can find it helpful to fall back on old resources, read books – like Edward Thomas’s that seek to find and welcome in the coming season; in his case almost literally seeking to unearth it as if a journey in its honour can somehow summon it up.  Here Thomas sets off for the West early one March on a pushbike, armed with little more than a camera and piece of old tarp.  The Spring he sought was a place as much as a season, a kind of Shangri-la that he had to travel to find.

I can find myself of reading of old walks or preparing for more at these times; dot to dots of journeys spanning years, totalling some grander navigation, like the point of them all can shine through all the clearer; not questions of distance or itineraries of place but the sum of an overall effort, of some kind of will to continue as if getting beyond any more personal or even universal winters.  Here our efforts can be calibrated if not actually weighed up; the things that we do in the seasons we have, the striving against any attrition, where we may eventually measure the breadth of the harvest bestowed.

We all have to live in the times we must face, deal with the cards we’ve been dealt.  We do so best if we can keep our eyes on horizons, look for opportunities, for any help available and that which we may be able to give.  That’s going to look different for everyone of us.  But we can take things one day at a time, knowing each evening may find us a little restored as we enter our various havens.  Journeys – physical or imagined – can help.  But ultimately as we grind or make our way with better grace through the last of what has felt like a particularly bitter winter, we can remember that all things will pass, that Spring can be seen as a season of the mind as much as anything else, that it can be here with us now, that flowerings can take many forms.