A couple of years ago, I went to see "The Secret Garden" at Interlochen Arts Camp. Friends on the faculty had insisted: "Get a ticket. You’ll love it. The young actors are extraordinary. The music is beautiful and the show is so uplifting."
So I went. The set was stunning. The young cast was exceptional.
But uplifting? It felt grim…as dreary as a damp March morning. Loss, loneliness, locked rooms — this was uplifting?
And then, something shifted.
A young boy stepped forward and sang "Winter's on the Wing." He sang about this very time of year—when winter loosens its grip:
"I say, be gone, ye howling gales,
Be off, ye frosty morns…
Part, ye frozen winter walls—
See, see, now it’s starting."
And just like that — spring began. Not only in the secret garden slowly waking from dormancy, but in the characters themselves. They softened. They opened. They bloomed.
That's when I understood. The uplifting part was the moment when something fragile but persistent pushes up through the cold.
So now, here we are — in this in-between season. This gray, uncertain bridge between winter and spring, I think of that song. Like Dickon, I choose to trust what I cannot yet fully see.
Stoop and feel it. Stop and hear it.
Spring, I say.
