“Hey!” they shouted in their loud yellow voices. I had seen them as I whizzed past, but I saw them as if I’d seen them a hundred times before and not, as was truly the case, for the very first time this year.
“Hey! You! Hey!” As soon as their call reached me, I stopped the car, backed up, pulled over, turned on my flashers in case anyone else came by, and leaped out. “Hello! Hello!” I sang to them. “You are so beautiful!”
They stood there, beaming, glad someone noticed and pretending they didn’t care if anyone noticed at all. But their gladness betrayed them. They wiggled with joy and proudly posed when I asked if I could take their picture.
To speak of some things is to profane them. I could try to tell you of the symphony that plays through my body when I am here, in this moment, in this place, full of the shimmering jade and emerald joy of emergence from the night. I could try to say how I am renewed again just breathing this air. But as I said, to speak of some things is to profane them. Some beauty is too deep for words.
This is the week that the clocks leaped ahead and the first flowers of the season burst on the scene. Spring has come at last, and I am downright giddy over its arrival. A small crocus opens in my garden. Along the roadside, the first coltsfoot beams up at me. A robin arrives to sit in that tree, right there.
I don’t know why—for a lot of reasons, I suppose—but I am deeply moved by all of this. Maybe it’s the contrast with the ice that was so recently here. Maybe its the emergence of color and birdsong after a long night of darkness and silence. Whatever the cause, I am moved by these small graces, these restorers of hope.
It’s not that life doesn’t place stars in the darkest nights. We’re never without at least pinpoints of light. And I clung to them all throughout the winter, believe me, and gave thanks that they were there. But now! So suddenly, it is spring, and I am overwhelmed with the world’s overnight transformation,
Maybe it’s a sign, I say to myself, smiling at how I reach for the wisdom of superstition, Maybe it’s like waking to find yourself inside a giant, luminous rainbow. How would that be for a sign?
I stand in the warm sun listening. The birds are returning, and from the creek such a chorus of frogs! Small graces. Priceless ones.
I lifted layers of oak leaves from the flower gardens and pulled out the tiny weeds. The soil smelled moist and rich, and the thick, green sprouts reaching up from it stood eager and proud. I think it wouldn’t hurt to put out some hummingbird nectar this week. You never know. They might fly in and need a good drink.
Sometimes I stop in my tracks and look around in wonder. “I get to be here,” I whisper to the spring air. “I get to be here.”
And so do you! I wish you Happy Spring, my friend.
May small graces bless your week and fill your heart with gentle joy.
Her pastel colors and sweet perfumes belie her. There’s nothing subtle about Spring. Just look at the way she arrives—oh, on that darling white pony leaving coltsfoot to show where it danced—but that aside look how all at once she’s here and everything is in motion.
I walked along the main road, heading toward the creek, not another human in sight. There, staring up at me from the other side of the guardrail, was a bed of coltsfoot. And I wasn’t even thinking about them them today. Good things often happen like that, sliding into your world when you’re least expecting them, as you no doubt have noticed.
The coltsfoot and the crocuses pop up at almost the same time as each other every year, with the crocuses just a smidgen ahead. They’re like hope fulfilled, signs that I’ve lived through the winter yet again. And I’m glad for that. I have a prayer on file asking to stay at least until I get to see the sky-blue irises that I planted last fall. And now that I’ve made it this far, I want to amend that. I want to see the whole parade.
This is the only world like this, you know. There’s no other Earth, no matter how far you go. And we get to live in it, for this flicker of a lifetime, and then to carry it with us past time itself.
I walked on the raised pathway through the oak grove listening to a near-deafening chorus of frog song, so varied in pitch and rhythm as it glided through the trees, whose feet the rains had come to wash for spring.
Think of the energy they must summon to pull their thick sap all the way from their roots up to the tips that touch the sky and to make leaves and acorns from nothing but that and light. They deserve this drenching and this clamorous serenade.
Only this one, this Earth. I let the sight of these oaks, well over their ankles in water, soak into my being. I dissolve in the scene and wear its smell. I taste the cool of it. I will remember you, I say to it as I leave. I will remember.
Someone has to go first, to risk the hazards, to scout the terrain and send back reports. Volunteer or elected, however it came to be, here they find themselves, both responsibility and privilege resting on their shoulders.
This year, as in all the years I’ve watched, the same clan has sent them. These are the ones who step forth. Upright and tall they arrive, wearing the colors of a king. And rightly so.
I salute them, my toes curling in glee as I drink in their thirst-quenching photons. They are here, I whisper to the sky. They are here. They are here. The sun warms my back. It knows.
At cloud-height the winds are fierce. You can tell by the way the clouds sweep across the sky. But here, at the base of these broad hills, it is still. Not one brittle husk is moving.
It’s as if the earth is holding its breath, or breathing in slow, meditative rolls. If you stand here and listen with your whole body, you can feel the power–rested, awake, waiting.
Here, only earth, only sky. And between them, all that is needed to sustain their every child. All of them. And I get to stand here, a guest at the wedding, tears at the beauty of it welling in my eyes.
An encore snow powdered down overnight, two inches of it. Just right. And the blue sky and sunshine irresistibly lured me to come play. Then it happened. That seldom-in-a-lifetime and only if you’re very lucky event. I caught them. The trees. Just finishing a twirl. You know that moment when a dance ends and the last note has just faded into silence? That’s how it was. I could almost hear them settling the way they do after a gust of wind has passed through. And I swear their branches were slightly bobbing, even though the air was perfectly still now, holding nothing but exuberance, left over, I am sure, from the dance.
