May is one of my favorite months. Technically, May is a spring month. But to me, it always marked the beginning of a summer mindset.

When I was a child, late May was often when school would break for the summer. As I got older my time wasn’t tethered to school so much. But summer still felt magical. It felt like a break from the literal and emotional cold of winter months and the hibernation that they bring with them. In my life, May always brought with it a feeling of rebirth.

So, as we’ve slipped into May I’ve found myself quite busy and active. It’s like the calendar change infused me with a burst of energy. On the second day of this month, I went on a walk with a group of strangers. The meeting details were posted on an app. Over a hundred user profiles RSVP’d to the listing, but on that chilly Friday I’d estimate it was about twenty of us that showed up to walk a trail with strangers. I flitted from one person to the next when I first showed up. But eventually I found a space for myself towards the back of the group with two other stragglers. One of them was about a half a decade older than me, the other half a decade younger. We talked and chatted about food and places we had lived. I enjoyed the conversation and time spent with these friendly strangers. Their friendliness warmed my Friday evening and the fresh air, while still chilled, felt fantastic.

My walking partners felt warm, accepting, and open. We bridged awkward silences together and met each other on the other side with enthusiasm over and over again.

In contrast, my workplace has been crumbling under the weight of drama and individual ambition lately. We had a long-tenured and highly visible employee in my department get sacked this past week. It was a Friday afternoon, the same day of my walk, but a few hours before. I didn’t know the firing was happening until my coworker, a large man in terms of both body weight and height, stormed down the stairs and starting shouting about packing up his desk. They tried to pull him out of the building, but his shouting about lawyers and who should have been fired in his stead, still found their way into the building.

It was uncomfortable and tense. And when Monday rolled around in the office, it was almost as though he had never been there. It felt like there was an unspoken agreement that we were not to talk about him. He was a ghost whose presence still haunted the environment but who no one dared speak about.

After work on Monday, the day after my coworker was fired, we were scheduled to go to a team baseball game. One of the women I work with cajoled me to buy the Uber with the promise that I would be reimbursed and with that we squeezed our four bodies into a vehicle heading southward through the spring day.

Too early for the game, we stopped by a nearby bar. I don’t normally get along with the people I work with, but I was excited to be there. The man who had been fired had been my tormentor and the kind of bully I thought I had left behind in grade school. I was excited by what my work life could look like with him out of the picture. But at the bar I found myself sidelined. Bodies turned away from me and other people’s sentences started sprouting out in the middle of mine. Attention briefly turned to me when they started to debate what new things I should do with my hair or appearance, or when the conversation turned to rent and they felt bold enough to ask how much I pay for my apartment.

But for the most part, I was talking to the back of people’s heads. After the third time of trying to raise my voice to have it heard, I paused and decided to not bother. Instead, I held the plastic cup filled with beer in my hands, turned it over, and sipped it thoughtfully. “This is nice”, I thought. I ordered another, this time with a shot, while my coworkers gossiped and nursed their first rounds.

I have a handful of memories from the game. I remember Doritos and ice cream, performative laughter, and more booze. I remembered that I hated the people I was surrounded by.

When I woke up in my bed, with no memory of how I had gotten home, I felt empty. I felt cold, down to my core.

And that’s not what May is supposed to feel like. It’s supposed to be a new beginning and a thawing from the previous months. Instead, my outing with coworkers felt like a dredging up of bad habits and old, painful behavior patterns that left me out in the cold. But the conversation I had with strangers, who graciously gave me time, attention, and presence out on the trail, was a spot of warmth. So, while the cold of my workplace continues to rage through my life, I have found a spot of warmth and brightness in the world on the trail in nature. I think I’ll keep returning to that trail and to people who meet me where I am. Maybe those moments are fragile, like the first green buds of spring, but even fragile things grow, if they are given the right care and attention.