Almost-Spring Thaw in Maine: Mud Season, Listening Closely, and the Work of Going Deeper

On mudflats, myth, and what returns changed

The culture of instant readouts rewards early signals and easy certainty. Late-winter Maine teaches a quieter discipline: noticing what is changing at the edges without assuming the deeper work is done.

Causeway mudflats in March, where clammers, ice floes, and skiers can all belong to the same short stretch of season.

Maine March: mud, thaw, and the deeper ground

The snow has receded from the Littlejohn Island roadways, and mud gathers thickly along many parts of the trails on Cousins Island. One might believe, from these first visible signs, that the ground is softening everywhere. But if you look beneath the trees, where the sunlight reaches less easily, the truth is more complicated. Snow still lingers there. The ground may appear ready around the edges while remaining frozen in the deeper, darker crevices of the woods.

I felt this vividly while running across the causeway between Littlejohn and Cousins Islands recently. Out on the mudflats at low tide, clammers were already at work in the exposed earth, moving through that familiar in-between season when winter loosens but spring has not fully arrived. Then, the very next day, with the tide higher, I saw a duck surfing effortlessly on a small ice floe as a disjointed raft of his companions paddled furiously nearby.

Just a few short weeks ago, those same mudflats were covered by ice and snow, and on one of my morning runs I saw our neighbors out cross-country skiing between the islands.

The landscape had changed quickly, but not completely.

Mud season often works this way. So do we.

Many years ago, when I was working as a fill-in physician in northern Maine, I became familiar with the annual anticipation surrounding a large lake that froze solid each winter. People celebrated not only the thaw itself, but the person most able to predict when “ice-out” would take place. That celebration raised its own deeper question: what actually counted as thaw? Was it open water around the edges? A visible break in the ice near shore? Or did it only count when the lake was entirely free?

It strikes me now that spring asks the same question of us. What does thaw really mean? Is it enough to feel movement where the sun hits? Or are we being invited into something deeper—something that reaches the places still held tight beneath the surface?

A recent conversation with someone observing Lent led me further into this reflection. I just finished reading one of Martin Shaw’s works on mythology, and one story stayed with me: a peddler dreams that he must leave home to find treasure. Though warned against the journey by his wife and the parish priest, he trusts the dream and travels farther than he ever imagined. At the furthest point, he meets a man who says that he too once had a dream, that treasure was buried beneath a hawthorn tree in a peddler’s yard, but he would never be foolish enough to follow such a thing.

So the peddler returns home and digs beneath the hawthorn tree in his own yard. There, he finds treasure. In some tellings, he digs deeper still and discovers even more. Eventually he realizes that what he has uncovered can be used not only for his own household, but also to restore the parish church.

I had heard versions of this fairy tale before, but not with the hawthorn tree, and not with the image of digging deeper and then deeper still. Those details caught my attention. In Celtic lore, hawthorn is often linked with thresholds and the unseen, which made the image feel even more resonant to me during Lent, in a season shaped by return, inwardness, and change.

Because this is often what spiritual seasons ask of us: not urgency, but depth.

During Lent, and I imagine during Ramadan and other traditions shaped by fasting, prayer, and inward turning, there is often a going inward, and then a going inward further still. Not to disappear from the world, but to reconnect with what is most true. To uncover what has been buried. To illuminate what might otherwise remain hidden.

This pattern is older than any one faith tradition. In myth, in medicine, in leadership, and in creative life, there is often a severance, a journey, and a return.

We leave what was familiar.
We enter a place of uncertainty or depth.
We return carrying something we did not have before.

Old Tree by

Brenda Cirioni

Radio Maine: Beryl Cui and the courage of beginning

On Radio Maine this week, my conversation with Beryl Cui returned me to the courage of beginning again.

Beryl, a cross-cultural communication educator and trainer who recently moved to Maine from Beijing, spoke beautifully about trust, confidence, listening, and the small brave acts that help people reconnect face-to-face in a world that too often rewards distance over presence.

One part of our conversation stayed with me in particular: her belief in “tiny change,” the idea that people do not need to make a dramatic leap in order to reconnect. Sometimes a five percent change is enough. Show up at an event. Ask a simple question. Look someone in the eye. Risk a conversation without knowing exactly where it will lead.

“It’s not only about grammar or vocabulary. It’s about bonding and the connection.”
Beryl Cui

Her story held that springlike quality of stepping into something new without needing full certainty first. Not instant belonging. Not full thaw. Just the willingness to begin.

A Healthy Conversation: making room for respectful complexity

This week, I’ve also been thinking about what it means to create spaces where people can show up honestly without being reduced to caricature.

My new role as co-host of A Healthy Conversation with Dr. Jeff Barkin has brought that question closer into focus. There is something powerful about building a place where people can speak in full sentences, where they can feel heard, and where the point is not performance but understanding. This Sunday’s showmarks our first time sharing the studio with a guest: Hannah Pingree, a candidate for governor of Maine.

“Having a healthy conversation is where we’re going to be able to move things forward.”

That line feels especially important right now.

With Dr. Jeff Barkin and Hannah Pingree in the WGAN studios, after one of many healthy conversations that Dr. Barkin and I will be having with candidates across the political spectrum this campaign season.

As a family physician, I have long believed that thoughtful listening is not optional. It is part of the work. People need room to share what matters to them, what worries them, what they hope for, and what they fear. That is true in the exam room. It is true in leadership. And it is true in public life.

A studio can be a place for slogans, but it can also be a place for discernment. My hope is always the latter.

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Grimes Cove Crab No. 2 by Joan Fischer

Off the Wall: Joan Fischer and color as renewal

This week’s Off the Wall feature highlights Portland Art Gallery artist Joan Fischer, whose work feels like its own argument for joy arriving in bright, honest form.

Joan did not always see herself publicly as an artist. For many years, her visible identities were attorney, councilman, police commissioner, and fundraiser. Art remained the quieter part of her life until retirement gave it more room to emerge. That history stayed with me because it offers another version of seasonal truth: sometimes what appears newly visible has actually been alive for a very long time.

Color is the driving force behind Joan’s work. Acrylic, watercolor, oil pastel, ink, and pencil become tools for images that feel playful, intuitive, and alive. Her fish and large-scale sculptures carry delight without apology. They remind me that renewal does not always arrive solemnly. Sometimes it arrives in brightness.

“The driving force behind all of my work is color, because it brings me joy.”
Joan Fischer

Her story also echoes the deeper movement of spring. What rises now may have been waiting below the surface for years, gathering its own readiness.

Bountiful Path Solo: What We Tend

On this week’s Radio Maine solo episode, What We Tend, I reflected on the quiet work of care over time.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that much of a meaningful life is shaped not by what we build all at once, but by what we tend, slowly and repeatedly, over years.

I learned this first in medicine. Healing rarely happened in a single visit. It unfolded through relationships, habits, trust, and attention. Often, my role was not to intervene dramatically, but to notice what needed care and to return to it again and again.

I have seen this same pattern in writing, leadership, parenting, and grief. What lasts is rarely what is rushed. It is what is tended with patience.

“What lasts is rarely what’s rushed. It’s what’s tended with patience.”

That, too, feels connected to thaw.

What softens in us may not need to be forced open. It may simply need steady attention, enough warmth, enough honesty, enough time.

Why this may matter to you

Lately I’ve been thinking about how often we mistake surface movement for full readiness. A team may look as though it has turned a corner while trust still needs rebuilding beneath the surface. A person may sound composed before they have found true steadiness. A relationship may be improving around the edges while something deeper still asks for care.

In medicine, I saw this often. Healing rarely came through one dramatic moment. It unfolded through relationship, consistency, and return. Leadership can work the same way. So can creative practice. So can the inner life.

The challenge is that our culture prefers the visible sign. We like the first clear patch of road, the first open water, the first evidence that something has changed. But some of the richest learning happens lower down, in darker soil, in deeper water, in places that are not yet ready to announce themselves.

This is one reason seasonal attention matters to me. The natural world keeps offering a kinder timeline. Mudflats can open while ice still drifts nearby. A trail can soften while snow remains in the woods. Both things can be true.

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Spruce Tree Sky Line: A New Day by Willa Vennema

Closing reflection

The roads are clearer. The mudflats are open at low tide. Clammers are out working. A duck rides an ice floe where a skier crossed not long ago. Around us, the season is shifting visibly. And yet under the trees, snow remains.

My takeaway this week is that this is not contradiction. It is instruction.

Spring does not ask us to deny what is still frozen. It asks us to notice what is changing without rushing the rest. It reminds us that unseen thaw is still thaw, that inward journeys have their own timing, and that what returns from depth often comes back carrying something we did not have before.

Sometimes the treasure is what we find when we return. Sometimes it is the person we become because we were willing to go deeper first.

Pause + Reflect

Where in your life are you seeing change around the edges, and what might become possible if you allowed yourself to go one layer deeper?

As the light changes and the trails continue to soften, I’m reminded that this work, too, is seasonal. It asks for attention, return, and a willingness to notice what is quietly changing. Whether you share a note, forward a post, or simply pause here for a few minutes, thank you for making room for these reflections.

I’m grateful to be part of your week.

✨ Thank you for walking this bountiful path with me.

Lisa

P.S. Also on my radar this mud season: MudFest, an upcoming series from Classical Uprising that turns Maine’s messiest season into an invitation for music, play, and community. I previously had the pleasure of interviewing conductor Emily Isaacson on Radio Maine, and this feels very much in keeping with the creativity and community-centered spirit she brings to her work. With participatory singing, live music, and playful reimaginings of how we gather, MudFest invites us to meet the in-between not only with patience, but with imagination.

The events begin next week—click here for more information!

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Join us for the Spring Virtual Book Circle

Awaken to the energy of spring and spend an evening with fellow readers who want companionship without homework.

Spring can feel like a threshold, with longer light, softer air, and the slow, steady work of thawing. We invite you to gather with us in that in-between space for the Bountiful Path Spring Virtual Book Circle on April 21

Meeting you along the Bountiful Path

We appreciate the opportunity to be part of your world.

If you’re wondering where to find us, here’s where we land during the week: Solo episodes on Monday, Radio Maine on Tuesday, Off the Wall on Wednesday, Books on the Boat on Friday, and The Bountiful Path Foundational Posts on Sunday.

See you on the path!

The Bountiful Path: Offering seasonal practices for real connection, rooted in medicine, leadership, and art.