It's Spring &...

It's raining.  Gently.  Nice female rain.  Being "spring time", when the temperature & the weather springs from one kind to another more often than it does the rest of the year 'cuz there's tug-of-war between the Winter People & the Greening People..  we had 2 days of +70F with +40f nights, followed by 2 days of +50F with +high-30s nights & the forecast is for this rain to turn to slush/sleet/maybe really wet snow by tomorrow morning.  Sure makes me appreciate good tires!

The river out back of my place is running high, fast, & muddy, but so far, we have at least 6 feet of "freeboard" before we have any flooding.  After last spring, everyone is working with fingers crossed so tight, we have cramps.  Hard to get anything done that way! 

People have been asking me to do ceremony specifically on this matter.  That tells me the effect of last year's winter & spring as nothing else could.  So, I've been talking to the river people & the rain people, asking them not to take out our roads & bridges on the premise that the longer drives we have to take waste more fuel & that's hard on our holy mother the earth.  The floods are good for the earth & the Standing Nation, but hard on roads, oil use, etc., so I hope they enjoy the food & hear us in a good way.  Basically, I've asked them to spread out the moisture over a longer time so we have some when we need it, too. 

I think of my ancestors who walked this way long before me & I suppose that people asked them to pray for the same kinds of things back before Europeans came here & put in roads.  It must have been between 'just plain tough' & 'impossible' to cross creeks & rivers when there was flooding.  Whenever I hear someone from the majority culture talk about having conquered nature, I laugh so hard..  I think 'nature' hasn't heard them.. 

But the cherry bushes have leaves budding, & the hawks & other summer birds are back, which makes me feel really good.  Have a great spring..