Easter Sunday Mount Ashland
Icy spring?winds sing,
Through mountain pines flocked with Easter snow,
Fresh?songs of love and hope
On Easter last year, a good?friend, my dog and I hiked Mt. Ashland during a wildly windy?snow storm, nearly a blizzard. I wrote the poem, above, to honor our joyful?Easter celebration,?playing?in untouched snow drifts and chasing each other around sky-high evergreen trees. Our laughter echoed in the majestic silence, cradling?us amid the unspeakable beauty. Though surrounded by winter’s?purest and finest, if one looked and listened?closely?between the snowflakes, spring was whispering her promise of rebirth.
Today, Easter Sunday, 2016, I left early for church and walked out into a silent, serene?snowfall. Enormous, wet?snowflakes gently drifted from the dark gray sky, covering the ground. Again, through the snow, I felt the promise we are assured every year–even the?coldest, longest?winter will end and spring will come. Nature, and our spirits, will bloom and flower once again. In a?world that doesn’t offer many guarantees, we have this promise and can hold this hope, even when winter is at its very harshest.
?In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Albert Camus