Dry Season

Every winter is a long winter here in the grey northwest, and we spend a lot of cozy evenings leaning into the hygge of it all by snuggling and watching nature documentaries. There really is nothing more family friendly than seeing a wolf snap the neck of a snow hare, especially a baby one. I kid, I kid. But I will tell you we only made it through a few episodes of Meerkat Manor before even the bloodthirsty twins couldn’t handle the baby left abandoned in the wilderness overnight. I still don’t know if he ever made it back.

One of the most common themes in these shows, of course, is the animals’ endurance through harsh conditions - storms, bitter cold, drought. And the filmmakers usually bring you right up to the point where you think there is no way that Mama Bear is going to be able to feed her cubs after the late spring blizzard — until the unexpected thaw comes and the rivers are once again teeming with salmon, who we are happy to see sacrificed so those furry little faces can eat their fill.

My favorite of these “brink of death” scenes is when the drought-ridden savannah (or outback, or desert) gets the downpour of rain from a once-a-year storm that heralds the wet season. I don’t know if there’s some sort of documentarian contract or something, but it is always, always signified by a close-up of parched, cracked earth with a single trickle of water flowing over it. Then the camera pans out and you see the trickles multiply, until a torrent water rushes in and life returns to a recently barren landscape.

I love it because my heart thrills every time. I gotta say, that pan-out image of the now rushing flood of water and the returning animals hits me. David Attenborough knows his job well. That seasonality somehow strikes a chord in my own soul. The idea of being completely spent, of pushing myself until all my energy is gone, my creativity completely evaporated. And then, after a spell of feeling completely desiccated, one small trickle of inspiration coming back, heralding a new season of exploration.

I wonder if, as I age, that trickle will stop returning each time. But for now, I am so thankful to be old enough to remember that all I have to do is hold out long enough and realize that sometimes the dry season is simply a reminder to be grateful for the productivity of the past and the expectation of future creativity. Right on the edge of that - when all the possibilities are open - that’s my favorite place to be, because I don’t know where it will lead.

This is a dry season and a hard time. But I’m seeing small streams, growing larger. And I can’t wait to seeing where they end up creating new beauty and new life.