Last week was one of those weeks where opening to the moment and all that it has to offer was key. Here on this part of Earth we had a March snowstorm. While it is not an every March occurrence, it does occasionally happen. And 11 inches of wet snow changes more than just the landscape. The mountains I look at every day got over two feet and so I will enjoy white mountains for quite a long while even with the mild temperatures of March in Virginia. The branches of evergreens and deciduous alike had trouble withstanding the weight of all that snow and many fell, knocking out power lines. But a few days without power, which means no well pump so no water out here in the country, allows a lull in time. And at this turning of the season, a bubble in time is a gift. It allows a check-in with my body, physical and energetic, that can be a little deeper than the everyday allows. And a check-in with my body means a check-in with the natural world that makes me who I am. The quiet of a snowstorm does not always end with the end of the snowfall. If there is enough snow, there are no cars out on the roads. And if the power is out, there are no electrical hums. Instead, there are the sounds wind brings: whispers of hemlock needles, shushes of boxwood branches with a rhythm gradually increasing as their load is lightened from the snow blowing off, tops of maple trees roaring as they swing to and fro. There are birds out searching for food everywhere. There are deer munching on the buds of fallen branches, branches that were far out of reach overhead before the storm. And with warm temperatures there is the constant drip of melting snow accompanying the sigh of contentment from the Earth as she soaks up the moisture. As we spin toward the sun each day, we are following our circuit in the galaxy which at this time of year on this part of Earth, brings us more light each day. And with more light, the rhythms of my body pick up like a symphony moving from adagio to minuet. I feel the support of the elements shifting with me and I am buoyed up by them. I am flying into spring. Spring, where the colors are brighter, there is new life both plant and animal, and joy pulses from the Earth's heartbeat.