Alex Mestas

It gets cold. Sometimes it snows. The moss grows everywhere. You eat and drink too much because you can’t get outdoors and do anything resembling physical activity or yard work. You get fatter and sleep a lot. Living in Oregon is like hibernating during the winter. You don’t see your neighbors because everyone has holed themselves up just as you have.  Like the groundhog awaking to see his shadow, your neighbors peek out when the sun rises and see how things can changed.

They get surprised about how big your child has gotten, while secretly you ask yourself just how big they’ve gotten during their own hibernation. You secretly  contemplate what you need to do to get back into shape. And get your yard in shape too. Because Oregon grows notoriously wild during the spring and given the large amount of trees that surround our houses, there’s always something to be picked up from the ground. There’s always moss to be cleaned from the roof and lawn. Always grass to be resodded and changed.

So we awake from our slumbers, crawl out of our caves and get to the yard cleanup. Hibernating bears scratching their ways out in the lawn.