Yesterday was the first day you could really feel spring in the air here in Southern Maine. It got, eventually, up to 50 degrees, but it was not so much that, as the lack of wind and the power of the sun that made the day feel springy. We have two days of constant rain (beginning at mid-night last night) promised now, which should put finished to the considerable amounts of snow and ice still on the ground, and then, hopefully, the winter dam will break and spring will come rushing in. Impatient birds are already moving in and through. I saw a pair of Song Sparrows along the Kennebunk Bridle Path, one lone Great Egret, and an Eastern Phoebe…as well as a Bluebird in the fields leading in to the beach. The buds are just beginning to show red on the maples. Maybe spring will come afterall.

This is a flood tide on Mousam River. All but a tiny bit of what you see here is normally marsh and well above water. I liked the green of the deepest water (backed up against the old dyke and path where an unnamed tidal creek passes through toward the Mousam) in the foreground, the variations of blues beyond, and the wispy clouds over the sea. The Sony NEX 3NL caught it all in this 24mm equivalent view, and HDR processing and image tuning in Snapseed brought it out, so the image is pretty much what I saw with my naked eye at the time.

And for the Sunday Thought: I have had to learn to appreciate the last-dregs-of-winter / before-spring-really-comes time in Southern Maine. It sometimes seems to stretch on for months. Mud season. Each year for several years now though I have found more of interest in that interval. I watch the birds come back. I watch the last drying of the grasses and reeds of last summer, their final turn toward gold, before the new green shoots come out. I watch for the first dragonflies in the pools where the sun warms them in the marsh along the river. And the changing skies of the season have their own attraction. This year we may actually miss much of that, since we stand to pass directly from winter into spring without that long pause. I might even actually miss it.

I have found that the more closely you look at any season, the more intimately involved you are in its development and passing, the more interesting it is…so that there is interest in any season and in all seasons, if you will only look. It requires a bit of discipline actually. You have to make your self look beyond, deeper than, the apparent dullness of the days. And that is, of course, a spiritual discipline that will repay itself where ever you apply it. Dull is what I am when I don’t look. It has nothing to do with the world around me. Certainly the Creator lavishes the same amount of attention and love on each day. There is always wonder to be found. Even in mud season in Southern Maine.