Keep Looking Up

Where do mosquitoes go in the winter? What about the dragonflies that hunt them? The turtles lying lazily on sunny logs just next to a lake's surface - where are they all winter long?  Under snow, under ice, under water. Fish, the larvae of many flying insects and reptiles and amphibians like frogs and turtles slumber far below the white cold world in the darkness and relative warmth (about 4 degrees Celsius) of pond and lake bottoms in the winter. Try to imagine that transition - dazzling sunlight, wind, warm or cool oxygen-rich air and then for several long months a wet uniform darkness and stillness. Next imagine waking up, one eye at a time, slowly, paw by paw, feeling life return with tiny movements and then, feeling the sun's invitation come through the ice-free surface down to the gloomy depths to pull you upwards back into thin cold air to see a sky changing colours. I have to imagine that more than a re-awakening it's a rebirth, and a powerful example of the patient power of abiding.
I wrote Bit by Bit in March 2021 as a difficult winter was ending. I was walking, unhappily, when I looked up and saw the first intense flares of red on the high twigs of a Maple tree. It felt like a reward for just having made it to that day with eyes and a heart that could still see renewal above and sense happiness ahead.