May Day In A Boat

May Day! There was something oddly reassuring about seeing May 1 at last on both my cell phone and my camera.
It was a long winter, for the severity of the weather, for how it seemed to hang on and on, and for the challenges and struggles that this one held.
May 1 seems to close a door on all that and define clearly that we have passed a certain portal into true spring.
May Day in school was a time to make paper baskets, write poems about nature, and color flowers to post around the edged of the chalkboard.
I remember violets under last fall's cottonwood leaves on the playground and forgetting coats outdoors at the end of recess and hoping to be the one person sent outdoors to gather them up for everyone.
Today the wind made the water choppy and scary so I clung to the edges and the coves where I was gladdened to see green things poking up out of last year'd dead and brown things.
There is nothing like fresh green shoots pushing past dried brown to remind us of the cyclic nature of nature and the certainty that struggles will be rewarded with happy times again and sorrows give way to joy.
May Day is truly spring and there can be no turning back!