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A post shared by ecofolks (@ecofolks) on Mar 9, 2019 at 11:00am PST

Now that we’ve switched into daylight savings time, the days feel longer and brighter.

I can’t help but feel relieved.

I understand that winter is a time to slow down, to recharge, and I’ve tried my best to appreciate its gifts. However, I feel like I am most myself when I’m outside, in the warm air, in nature.

I feel happiest when, even if I can’t be outside all day every day, the windows are open and I can hear the birds as I work. And when the workday’s done, I’m out the door in a flash—to my garden, or with the dog, or just to stand on the front step and feel the sun on my cheeks.

So, while early spring isn’t my favorite time of year—where I live, it’s mostly mushy, dirty snow, getting “booters,” and thinking it’s warm enough for just a sweater when it actually isn’t—it’s a promise.

For those of you who are equally ready for winter to be over, who would choose a forest over any other place to be, who feel a similar unfurling as the days start to get longer, here are some of my favorite John Muir quotes to help us celebrate this equinox:

1. “The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”

2. “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

3. “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

4. “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

5. “I never saw a discontented tree.”

6. “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”

7. “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”

8. “Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”