My Spring Has Sprung

Spring has arrived… I know it because everything here is yellow. The pollen is a little like snow. It covers everything. Everyone I know is sniffling and sneezing. I love this time of year.

It's funny; I don't really have a favorite season. I really just love the change. When you first see your breath in the beginning of the winter, when the leaves start to change and then litter the ground in the fall. Spring is great that way. All of the flowers and plants coming back to life after being dormant over the winter. Beauty all around us. Good stuff.

One of my favorite parts about spring is shad roe. Shad live on the east coast and in rivers like the Hudson in New York they are born and return to lay eggs and die. They're fish. They spend the rest of their time in the ocean in huge schools. Average shad weighs about five pounds and returns to the same place it was born after about six years to lay eggs and die. Some times as much as one hundred and twenty miles up stream.

Shad are good to eat. One problem, lots and lots of bones. The American Indians in the area have a story which explains it.-- There once was a porcupine that was unhappy with its place in the world, so he asked the Great Spirit Manitou to give him a better situation in life. Happy to please, the Great Spirit turned him inside out and threw him into the river. He was the first shad. When it comes to taste the female is a little bit better than the male. First of all they carry more fat and have a more flavorful flesh. Second they are carrying eggs. Lots of them. They are in a kind of a sack. It's a thin membrane that encases the eggs. Kind of looks like a large bratwurst.

The eggs are the best part. Great for breakfast wrapped in bacon then sautéed and served with scrambled eggs. Yum! The cool part is that they are only available for a very brief period of time in the early spring. Eating them is as much about spring and embracing new life, virility and the life cycle as it is about the way they taste. I always try to have some every year and spend some time thinking about the new season and life that is starting and finishing around me every day.

Had mine for the season the other night. I know I'm a dork, silly sometimes the things that I get passionate about. I really do love this crazy mixed up life that I find myself caught up in. So many beautiful moments!

Great story – that one about the porcupine. I love the tales we tell ourselves to explain the things that we don't know or understand. The myths and legends we surround ourselves with are so incredibly interesting. Funny how we can't just let things be mysterious or unexplained. One of the scariest things to admit or hear another person say is "I don't know." I don't know… I don't know… It almost comes across as irresponsible, reckless. To really not know what you are doing, where you are going, how you feel. You almost feel ashamed to answer a question with that phrase. Not if you are just avoiding the question, we all do that. But if you really just don't know the answer. Not because of a lack of information, not because the question is even particularly hard but just because you honestly don't know. How you feel, what you want…

I say it is ok not to know some of the time. I have several things that fit into that category. My mind has been working on some of them pretty hard the last month or so. Dreams run through my sleep most every night. Almost like my mind is trying to figure out the answers. Funny thing is there aren't any. I like the dreams, I get to spend time with a friend I haven't seen in years in most of them and somehow that makes my heart smile a little bit.

The questions that I do know the answers to are worth way more than the ones I don't. The others will get sorted out in time, or they won't… either way it will be ok.