Winter days are short. It’s bad enough that dusk comes early, drawing us indoors for warmth, shelter, and light before we are ready, but the mornings remain dark and cold, tempting us to continue our nightly hibernation far longer than is good for us.

This year the darkness has been augmented by brutal arctic cold for days at a time. Two or three times the chill winds have paused as if to catch breath, inhaling a gentle breeze from warmer climes across the land for a day or two, only to exhale again with renewed hibernal vigor.

We are only three weeks from the Spring Equinox, and the cold continues, but something has changed. The light of late afternoon has begun to linger longer as a pearly glow—like the inside of a sea shell—instead of simply fleeing into darkness. I find myself waking to similar pearl grey light instead of utter darkness. The days are still much colder than they ought to be, and the atmosphere is often one of fine snow, stinging ice, or near-freezing rain, but the inevitable is happening—the time of Light is increasing. I know this because, as I lay still cocooned in my bed in the dimness of pre-dawn, a sound penetrates from outside my window and brings warmth to my heart. It is the full-throated song of the Cardinal announcing that the time of sleep is coming to an end and it is time to Wake Up and Grow!