A Year of Gratitude – March 4, 2024

I found my gratitude on a walk in the woods today. It was unusually warm today, so I managed to get in a tromp through the woods before lunch. Later on in the day, I took a long walk with Penny Lane.

The woods were quiet other than the sound of my feet as they struck earth or the natural forest litter between my feet and the earth. There were plenty of pine cones that crunched underfoot. Our windy winter deposited a lot of small branches and twigs. They snapped and protested loudly when I stepped on them.

The sun was shining, streaming in rays between the tree limbs overhead. I listened to the birds in the trees above me. I heard a bluejay. Somewhere in the distance, I could make out the sound of a woodpecker working on a tree trunk. I tried to get close enough to see it in action, but I didn’t.

I mentioned last night that we spotted a fox in the woods as we were having our pizza feast. I didn’t see a trace of the young fox. I imagined where it had probably retreated from our view last night, back into the tree line.

When I decided to head back towards the old barn, I took a slightly different path than the one I had followed when going into the woods. It brought me to a small shallow depression in the ground where water had collected. It had frozen some time ago. I could see dried leaves from last fall, pine cones, and small twigs trapped below its surface. There were a few just barely clinging to the top of the ice, ready to be freed once warm sunshine melted away a bit of the ice.

There was something about this patch of ice that caught my attention. I stopped to take in the details of it. The craggy edges revealed pine needles underneath. The ice seemed to be holding on to winter while the nature trapped inside it was waiting to be released from its grasp.

I saw myself in this moment. I am ready for a new season, for the sunshine to warm up the icy space I have been in. I am ready for the warmth to release the parts of me that have been trapped in that ice, waiting to be released. There’s a time for winter, for ice and all it traps beneath it.

It’s time for the next step now. It’s time to allow sunshine and warmth to smooth out the craggy edges, to reveal what has been hidden under the ice all this time. I have a feeling that it is new growth, the bright green that is set forth in spring when everything is new and fresh.

I’m so ready for it, to discover what lies ahead, to give myself permission to change. Yes, change can be scary. It can be difficult. There will be bumpy roads ahead and uneven terrain. But refusing to change is a path I don’t want to walk. I have seen where that leads and it just isn’t a place I want to go. So, I will get out my map and keep walking forward, keep exploring, and keep finding new and wonderful discoveries in the woods, in myself, and in the gratitude I choose to fill my days with.

I hope that your day gave you a bit of beauty to enjoy and that it treated you kindly.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.