What to do when you're blue

Every one is tired of winter. Even sunshine, welcome as it is, doesn't seem enough when its below freezing outside. What to do? Nothing to change things, except be patient. Or adjust your attitude, and not necessarily with alcohol. Even so, sometimes melancholy lingers, demanding to have its day. Perhaps its best to just go with it and not take it personally.

I saw and heard two things recently that I thought were wonderful. One evening last week, the last week of February, the dogs and I were coming up Youngwood out of Bird Park. It was relatively warm, in the 40s or so, the sun was setting in a clear sky and the air was so still. It was the prettiest dusk you could imagine. We stopped, the dogs with their noses trained on some fascinating odor and me with my eyes and ears open, taking in the deepening evening sky and the windless stillness. As we reached the corner where Youngwood meets Mayfair, I heard a basketball thumping on pavement and the sound of small lungs huffing. We continued on and there was a little girl in a pink hoodie and soft blue jeans taking aim at a basket set up in her driveway. Her soft breath, the hard thump of the ball on asphalt, the quiet, deep silvery blue of the night air and the pink and washed blue of her clothing all came together in my mind as a lovely snapshot, to be stored away and pulled out of its box every now and again to study, not for meaning but just for beauty.

The other experience was just as brief and ephemeral, but so lovely. Again, me, the dogs and the park. We wandered in the Bird Park Drive entrance on Sunday. Sunny again, but cold. Too often, I have my head down when we walk, because its cold, or because I am watching the dogs. Maybe because I am tired. At the Bird Park Drive entrance, there is a long field, which sits in a valley at the bottom of two smallish tree-covered hills. There is a small play-gym area for kids, a fire pit and a path leading up to a picnic shelter. But its mostly open space. We had just walked in and I lifted my head in time to see, as a swift breeze picked them up, a scattering of dry leaves being tossed, hurly burly, across the field. It seemed almost as if they were chasing each other. As quickly as they flew past, the breeze died and the leaves, so soft and light and pale, drifted down again to the ground.

When I'm feeling blue, I do know that a walk can be the best thing for lifting spirits. Second best is the memory of other good walks.