Head down, trudging through a walk, I find it hard to take in the bright sun, the cool breeze biting at my face. My back hurts, and it has been a stark spring so far. The landscape feels barren and I have to slow down in order to look carefully at the trees for the beginnings of buds.

I tend to be a preoccupied and out-of-it person. My kids will roll their eyes and tell you that I am usually the last in the room to get clued in to what everyone else has already grasped. Nature really has to yell sometimes to get me to rise above my own inner dialogue when I am walking. While I work at doing better, especially today as I walk along my favorite arroyo, (a long dry wash of sand), it hasn’t been working.

I slog on, pushing into a dense patch of bare-branched willow shrubs. Suddenly, I see clear trickles of water bubbling at my feet; the arroyo is running. Dry during the year, except during large storms, arroyos carry the run-off from the snowpack down from the mountains in the spring here in the southwest. They can run for weeks.

Every year it is magical. The runoff starts with a trickle, cutting through the silt and fields left purposely undeveloped throughout town, growing—if we are lucky—to a rushing stream that feeds the willows and chamisas before slowly decreasing and withdrawing to the mountains in early summer. When my children were little, we’d make time every day to go play in arroyo waters.

But today, the water is creeping along, reaching out with delicate fingers and making little channels that braid back and forth over themselves. My eyes water up. I am amazed. This year especially, a deep part of me had totally forgotten about this annual miracle.

I lean over, gut punched, and stop, grateful there are no hikers near me. I stoop, flatten my palms and press them into the shallow waters and let cold healing come to my hands. A cycle is continuing. Winter came and brought snow. The snow is now melting. The world is getting lighter and water is running. The cottonwoods and willows will leaf again.

In my family, we are getting over a season of unwellness and preoccupation. I am getting over the (regular) flu. One child has recently had surgery and now has a cold. Coronavirus has crashed like a tidal wave into our lives, and we are all home washing our hands, cleaning surfaces, doing laundry, and bingeing online to avoid overwhelm.

I have been remembering 9/11, which occurred on the day of my mother’s memorial service. My personal life had just changed irrevocably and then on top of that, the whole world changed irrevocably.  My then-husband said, “This is going to change everything,” and went on to outline the coming loss of security and the growth of more control over individual liberties. He was always good at grasping the totality of a situation, while I, with my body on autopilot, was unable to take in any part of what was happening, going from generally out of it to totally lost in mental fog.

The world has again taken a sharp left turn, very likely moving to a reality none of us can truly imagine. My brain’s stage hands have rolled the protective fluffy clouds onto the scene and my exhausted mind has been just humming tunelessly along, vague and unfocused.

But today, this tiny sandy stream knocks the breath out of me. It is as sharp and clear as lightning. As we humans fuss, grapple and grieve with the disasters of our own making, the snowpack, this year at least, is melting and running down the mountains because that is what it does.

Spring is replenishing everything, the cottonwoods, the wild irises, and I get to see it happening. The earth is still operating, following the cycles of dormancy and regeneration we have long ignored.

I can notice and be fed. Or I can ignore it and stay preoccupied.

Yes, we are sick and locked down. Yes, we are freaked out and overwhelmed. And yes, the earth is speaking. But we have not been abandoned. We just have to lift our heads and pay attention.