Next week brings Spring Break, though I suspect the season itself remains uncommitted to any particular schedule. The humans speak of it with the same anticipation they reserve for walks to Drake Park—a certainty that something fine awaits, despite evidence suggesting otherwise.

At 9°C this morning, spring feels more like a rumor than a fact. The ponderosas hold their winter stillness. The chokecherry trees show no sign of the optimism their name suggests. Even the squirrel, normally given to theatrical displays of territorial fervor, moves with the measured resignation of someone who has checked the forecast.

Yet there is something stirring beneath the apparent stasis. A quality of light that arrives earlier each day. The way Gus lingers an extra moment on the deck, nose lifted toward possibilities I cannot name. The certainty that somewhere, just beyond the reach of immediate observation, things are preparing themselves for transformation.

I have learned to trust these intervals—the spaces between what was and what will be. They require patience, which basset hounds understand better than most. Spring will arrive when it arrives, with or without our permission, with or without our breaks.

Until then, we wait. The light grows longer. The world prepares.

~P.W.