To the Editor:

There’s a stretch of days in the North Country when winter hasn’t quite left, but spring shows up drunk and barefoot anyway—stumbling into our mornings with fog, dragging sunlight behind her like a forgotten coat. That’s the season we’re in now. Sap buckets tapping out Morse code from the maples, rivers swollen with secrets, and boots caked in enough mud to sculpt a second pair.

They call it “spring,” but really, it’s a season of becoming. The kind of raw, honest change that doesn’t ask permission. It breaks the ice with a chainsaw and dares you to walk barefoot through the thaw.

Up here, we’re used to the long silence of snow. But when the thaw comes, it’s a noisy thing. Water rushing. Birds testing out old songs with new voices. Even the gravel in the road starts to talk back under your tires. And we—you, me, your neighbor with the snowblower still parked by the porch—start moving different. A little lighter. A little looser in the shoulders.

We talk about how new beginnings rarely come from comfort—they’re born in the mess, in the chaos, in the dirt of it all. Spring in the North Country is a living reminder of that. It doesn’t bloom like a Hallmark card. It claws its way through frozen soil and dares the world to bloom anyway.

It’s important to love it here right now—the sudden urge to hit a dirt road just to see where it goes, the coffee boiling over an open flame, the way your dog runs ahead like they knows something you don’t. The Dharma isn’t always found in temples or poetry. Sometimes, it’s in stacking wood, patching a tire, or watching your breath disappear a little slower each morning.

So here’s to the mud season—the unsung, unfiltered prelude to rebirth. May we all be cracked open by it just enough to let the light in.

Martin Robert

Parishville