A walk on this March morning starts with undressing. The jacket is shed. The mittens next – the hat. There is no sun, but moist air, warmer than anticipated. The thin band of ice on the river's edge has vanished. Winter stops and starts in this month of becoming spring.

Garrison Keillor has chosen Faith Shearin's poem, "Weather," for today's Writer's Almanac. I listen as I walk in the wet trees.

A lifelong diarist, I track my days by the weather. So, I love reading May Sarton's late-in-life diaries: they are mostly weather and the dramatic role it plays in her solitary seaside daily life.  

March is a month with a natural tension - it may still blizzard. And if it does, how quickly it will melt. Mostly, it's a reassuring month. It can only be a matter of days before all the landscape changes, and hidden life quickens.

All text and photos copyright Kelly DuMar 2017