Spring comes tomorrow, again. This crazy weather makes me happy. For a moment I saw the sun today and I felt like the kids in the Ray Bradbury story who live on Venus and see the sun once every seven years. In the story, they lock the little outcast girl in the closet just for meanness, and forget to let her out. She missed it--the one little tiny interval when the sun shone for the first time in seven years. I have never forgotten that story since my second grade teacher read it a billion years ago. We humans, we can be so cruel.

So, tomorrow, off to the woods. All the hours I've been working--in contrast to the fall, my nose is to the grindstone--will allow me to take tomorrow off. And a retreat is not too far behind.