Mud, Melt, & Miracles

There’s something about a northern winter that doesn’t just settle into the landscape… it settles into you. It lingers. It stretches. It asks for endurance.

Just a week ago, we were buried under more than a foot of fresh snow. The kind that muffles sound and presses everything into stillness. The kind that feels less like weather and more like a season laying its full weight across your shoulders.

And then, almost quietly, something shifted.

The temperatures softened. The sun lingered a little longer in the sky. The hard, frozen edges of everything began to loosen. What once was white and pristine has given way to muddy muck, puddles, and rivulets of meltwater carving their way through the land. It’s messy. It’s imperfect. It’s beautiful.

Because it smells like spring.

You can’t always see it at first—but you can smell it. That damp, earthy scent that whispers, “We made it.”

The Canadian geese seem to know it too. Their calls overhead feel like a declaration: keep going, keep going… north is calling. There’s something deeply comforting in their return, like a promise kept year after year.

And then there are the animals.

Maybe I’m placing too much of my own emotion onto them—but it feels like they know. The chickens, who have spent weeks tucked in and waiting, are venturing out again. Watching them free range, scratching and exploring with renewed curiosity, feels like witnessing small celebrations scattered across the yard.

Even more, they’ve started laying again. Quiet, steady signs of life returning.

And our goats… oh, the goats. One is due any day now, with others not far behind. There’s an expectancy in the air, a kind of sacred anticipation. New life is just around the corner, and you can almost feel it pressing in, ready to arrive.

All of it together—the thaw, the geese, the eggs, the soon-to-be babies—feels like hope unfolding in real time.

Because if I’m honest, it has been a long winter. Cold. Dark. Heavy in ways that go beyond the temperature. The kind of season that asks a lot from your spirit.

And yet here we are.

Mud on our boots. Water pooling in the low spots. The air carrying that unmistakable promise.

Spring doesn’t arrive all at once—it seeps in. It melts in. It calls things back to life one small moment at a time.

And with it, something in me is coming back to life too.

“See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come.” — Song of Solomon 2:11–12

These herbs on my kitchen window sill brighten my spirits.

It’s free ranging season again.