Second Winter

 It is April 3, 2022, a Sunday, and it is snowing in the mountains.

Yesterday, Saturday, it was sunny and warm and I spent the entire day baking and cleaning and doing laundry and disemboweling and reassembling the vacuum. It was a productive day. Then, in the evening, I spent hours digitally house-hunting, owing to having recently accepted a new teaching job at a high school in Greeley.

I've felt calm about this impending change, at times. At times I've felt afraid, nervous, apprehensive, reckless, invigorated, lonely, adventurous, and a thousand other things. Mostly, though, (and I suppose anxiety is the root of this), I have felt the heft of coming loss.

I awoke around 2:00 or 3:00 this morning in a sweat, so I turned in bed and cracked open the window just above my pillow. It was snowing, silently, gently--the large, wet flakes wiping down and dancing off the light from the street lamp in the parking lot below. In that moment where I awoke from fear, and in the morning hours when fear surrounded me because change is awash in fear for me, I thought of the loss of that view; I thought of the loss of the snowflakes in the quiet mountain air and the cold that cures the sweat that strikes in the night.

I fear the feeling of regret--that I might regret this choice, this impending move, this stage of my life wherein I take steps that look like they might be forward but could so easily be years and miles backward.

I haven't lived in Weld county for many years. I did so as a grad student, happily enough, for a time. It has changed a great deal since I knew it, in many ways. It's bigger. It's creeping West toward I-25. It's attracting people from out of state who want to be close to the mountains. It's flood risk and fire risk are both rising. But even so, it is, really, just a place like any other place.

I want to look forward with alacrity to this new step, this new job, and this new, yet familiar place. I want to find human connection in greater number and with greater ease than I have done living in Edwards. (Pandemic notwithstanding). I would like to find a place to put down roots and build a life and find a community to embrace and to be embraced by and to grow into for the long-haul.

And in that hope, there is, too, loss. I hope I can grieve the loss of apartment 5304, the friends I've made while attending CMC, and the truly lovely students and their parents that I so greatly appreciate and admire with grace.

Like the Disney movie Onward indicates in its title, there is progress to be made in moving onward--physically, emotionally, professionally, and inter-personally. I hope I have the courage to take the leap and keep walking. Or, even more than that, I know I'm lucky to have supportive friends and family to hold the rope if I fall and need to be pulled back up again.

To everything a season. Here's to Second Winter. May it bring reminders that nothing lasts forever, either for the good or for ill. May the seasons of the natural world serve to show that our own lives have seasons too, and we need only dress for the weather in order to enjoy it.