One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in … at length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snow banks, and the sun dispersing the mist smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense … and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.
So wrote Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 classic Walden; or, Life in the Woods. The detailed observations of this committed nature-lover and Transcendentalist about the change of season are a reminder of the incredible healing gifts nature offers year round, none more so than in springtime.
And Thoreau was definitely onto something when he noticed ‘the sun's rays have attained the right angle.’
The phenomenon of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) has been known since the 1980s, when this was the diagnostic label given to winter depression. Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia University Medical Center, and an expert on SAD, says that there are distinct patterns of winter depression lifting in the spring, and this could be linked to the earlier onset of morning light. For example, his studies have shown more depression on the western edges of time zones in the US, where the sun rises later.[1]
Heard of spring fever? When everything around us is bursting into bud or flower, landscapes unlocking from the frost, and birdsong is the soundscape to daily discoveries of fresh new life, it’s impossible to ignore the sense that spring is inspiring a restless, generative energy—not only in nature—but in all of us.
It’s a great time to be out and about: enjoying the longer, warmer days; breathing in the scents of spring; appreciating the renewal of nature … and catching spring fever.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-spring-fever-is-a-real-phenomenon/
