February is known as the coldest month, last year seeing an ice storm that shut down the entire state and this year fraught with threats of snow. Everyone dreads the end of winter, its almost as if the season wants to go out with a bang. Braving the elements to do this journal required what felt like hundreds of layers of sweaters, gallons of tea, and hours of risking frostbite simply to catalog our natural environment. With temperatures below freezing plus windchill, February 2015 lived up to these expectations. Through my observations I have seen the process that our campus has gone through and its survival through the last month of winter.
This month has been one of death and rebirth, of change and of growth. The changing environment has reflected many events that have occurred in my own life. Through the past few weeks I have not only watched my favorite tree, located directly outside my window, lose all its leaves and become bare and weak in the cold, but I have witnessed a good friend’s mother slowly lose her battle with cancer. Though the two are not even comparable, the events represent the end of the a life. And with the end of one life, others that depend on that life must learn and adapt. The birds that called the tree home have now found shelter within the woods of Blunn Creek just as my friend will have to learn to manage life without the woman who raised her. It is hard to keep a positive outlook when everything around you is grey and brittle. However, through the despair there is always points of color, points of joy.
With the onset of winter weather there is hope that a beautiful spring will soon follow. All the familiarity of that year will be erased by the winter. As Aldo Leopold explained regarding his farm, “do not return for a second view of the green pasture, for there is none. Either falling water has dried it out, or rising water has scoured the bar to its original austerity of clean sand. But in your mind you may hang up you picture, and hope that in some other summer the mood to paint may come upon the river,” (52).
For example, though the tree outside my window has become victim to the cold winter air, the flowers below it are still vibrant shades of purple and yellow. The grass is still the deepest green and the evergreens grow more luscious every day. And though my friend may have experience something absolutely tragic, her girlfriend’s sister has just had a daughter. Life continues, families grow, and creatures adapt no matter how terrible things get or how seemingly earth-shattering the event is.
This month, though being outside was a struggle, was filled with observations of life. Every morning I could hear birds seeing, I could look out my window and see a cardinal sitting on the fence, I could see people smiling and life happening. Overall, February saw the end and beginning and the inbetweens of many lives.