Stone Cold Winter in 75 degree weather

Living in California, Winter has in the past been several weeks of rain off and on and enough chill in the air to make the hot tub in our back yard a rewarding excursion-warming us to the bone, a warming that stays with you, takes the stuff out of you. Whatever you've been carrying around, in the chilled darkness as you dissolve into the liquid heat of 102 degrees, disappears as your body is enveloped by the heat. No more bones, no more sharp angles or sharp thoughts-it mellows you out. Well, that is not this year. It's hot. And it feels wrong. The winter duldrums, the stone gardens bereft of new life in the 75 degree weather and strange white sun light have me longing for rain to cool the earth, to feed the earth, to replenish the earth. The promise of the mission of the Spring to bring life to everything around us is not now. The winter's gray and wet imposes our sealing ourselves off from the outside. That provides the opportunity to regroup, rethink, reevaluate, take less action and more focus and concentration as a response to the demand of the outside being difficult to deal with at best. Waiting for spring, waiting for the buds to appear that's how it is in Winter, but how it is is that the red maple has not lost it's leaves and some other trees have started to bloom-out of synch, out of time.

Global warming, that's what they say. A perfectly brilliant woman said today-oh how can they talk about global warming when it's freezing cold, extrememely cold in different parts of the country, more freezing than usual. Well, of course, that's global warming also actually. What I think is there is adaptation, there is accommodation and change is underway and we will meet this change. We already are becoming conscious of the our carbon offset, the steps we can take to account for our use of the planet is the green book philosophy and this is huge compared to 5 years ago when only the "freaks" were looking in that direction. Now we're all some degree aware and some degree responsible. More would be good, but everyone has the question: are we going to get to keep the world as we know it and if so what can we personally do to have it be that way. Give up our cars and bike or walk, some amount of that goes on where I live but it's because this is a university town and walking is definitely reasonable and biking, a bit of a gamble out there with cars and an occasional bust up with the bike participant being the loser of any such occurance.