What lured me up the hillside was the splash of green I spotted from my kitchen window. It was right at the base of the maple where I remembered seeing tall spikes of green first thing last spring. Wiggling with happy anticipation, I pulled on my boots, zipped up my jacket and headed out.
“March Fool!” a knot of little kids laughed from a corner of my mind as I saw that the green I had spotted wasn’t fresh sprouts at all, just ferns left over from last year.
“No!” I shout at the taunting voices. “It’s April Fool, not March. Go home.” They turned and faded into the mental mist, still giggling that I was fooled.
“Even so,” I said, turning to the fern. “You’re quite lovely.” It agreed that I could take its photo in honor of its grace. I thanked it and bid it fare well.
I looked up the hill to choose a path for my climb. A cat seemed to be trapped in the bark of the maple’s trunk there before me. Or was it an owl? You decide.
The stump to the east looked like a horse’s head with its deep brown eye and the green foam around its mouth, proof that it breathed deeply before it finally fell.
And right here at my feet, the roots of a towering giant are decorated with bouquets of seeds and twigs, fallen leaves and lingering ferns, as if others had come before me, leaving gifts on its moss-painted toes.
Then, high above me, a crow’s call cut the air. Looking up, I saw the silhouette of the trees waltzing in the breeze. For a minute or two, I stood at their feet waltzing with them. Then I climbed back down, heading home, glad to have been a March fool.
