I had to come see you on this most special day. I think of it as a kind of birthday after all, a day to celebrate your beginning anew. And look how you’re dressed for the occasion! I like the reds, the way they rise, swollen with life, and the textures, lacy, and curled. Soon, the songs of frogs and blackbirds and visiting ducks will fill the air, and the wondrous greens will unfold. But today is the first page of the next edition of your ever-renewing story, dear Wetlands. Happy Spring! Just look how you’re dressed!
On spring’s first day, a flock of tiny leaf-birds appeared on a vine that mere days ago was wooden and bare. And there, they spread their green wings to the sun, singing with joy. And the sleeping vine awoke and whispered, “Stay, little leaf-birds! Let my heart be your home!” And the leaf-birds, softly laughing, answered, “Thank you, dear vine. Your love is the reason we’ve come.”
My eyes find the tree’s upper limbs, a symphony of sorts, played against the dappled March sky as the morning’s rains float off to the west. For a while I cannot move or think. I can only stare and breathe the cold, moist air. When I return to myself, my mind is reeling as it surveys all it must have taken for this tree to be dancing exactly here, exactly now, and for me to have traveled my own long road making all the unlikely choices that led me to this gift, exactly here, exactly now, and how it was exactly what I needed.
I really do live in a tree house. It’s built into the side of a wooded hill. I sit at a small table in front of a west-facing, second story window and watch the scene change as the hours and days flow by. My closest neighbors wear feathers or fur and come in all sizes and their visits are gifts.
But then, isn’t everything?
(Was that a “Huh!” I heard? A snort of sorts? Listen. Just because something doesn’t suit your fancy or meet your expectations or go the way you wanted it to go doesn’t mean it’s not exactly what you needed. Everything has its upside. Sometimes it just takes some distance to see it. It’s that “can’t see the forest for the trees” thing.)
I learn a lot from the trees, whether I can see the forest from within it or not. It’s kind of like this experience we’re having of being human. It’s impossible to see the whole forest from here. The best you can do is get a glimpse of it now and then from atop some peak you’ve climbed. But you know it’s there, the forest. And you know it expands farther than you can imagine and is still but a fragment of what may well be an endless whole.
Anyway, what I started to share with you is how much I have been enjoying the gifts March is bringing. It’s a month of such changing moods. One hour is dreary and dark, the next is bright with sun. There’s stillness and high winds, snow and unaccustomed warmth. And beneath the constant changes is the great progression of the seasons. You can feel the push of springtime as it struggles to be born.
I’ve been watching grasses and the leaves of flowers poke up through the soil. They push aside earth and stones, the blanket of last year’s leaves, the twigs and cones fallen from the spruces. One fragile leaf can do that, one little blade of grass. The life force is a powerful thing.
Still, I wondered one day, what prompts them to do that? What prompts any of us to persist, to push against the darkness and confusion that blocks us from being what we want to be? “The light,” my mind answered; “the warmth.” And then a quieter voice spoke. “Hope,” it said.
Hope. I let myself taste the word. It’s like a wish or a dream, but more. It’s a flash of certainty that what you most long for is possible and real. It’s like that glimpse from the top of the peak where you see the forest stretching into an infinite sky.
Is there darkness before you? Are heavy boulders in your way? Are sharp winds whipping your face? Are you pelted with cold rain and a muddy stretch of road? Keep going, the leaves of birthing flowers say. Push onward, say the little blades of grass. Ahead there is warmth, and love, and light. Keep on.
From my tree house, I wish you a week drenched with hope. Keep on.
Sometimes I’m sure I see them dancing. Not just their branches, the whole tree. They do that, you know, when they think you’re not looking. Usually at night, or deep in the forest where humans seldom go. But here we are, in the midst of March, the mistress of moods, and she’s scattering snowflakes in shining bright sun, and how, imagine, if you were at tree, could you keep yourself from dancing?
Deep in the center of us, something knows. No matter how uncertain the path, how many the unexpected obstacles or how formidable, something leaves clues, whispers from beyond the bend, drops a sign, shines a light. The key is to remember that it’s there and worthy of our trust. Watch. Listen. Go with ease. Keep on.
On your way out the door, smile. Let your grin linger on the threshold for a while and roll across the floor just to let them know, as you leave, how good it was to be there, to give them a picture of you to hold when they think of you in your absence, when they think of your coming for another stay.
Overnight, the maple’s red buds burst, freeing their tiny leaves to reach for the sky, etching a scarlet lace against the deep blue where days ago, there were but bare twigs.
And from one of the high branches, a call sounded forth, clear and high, a single note followed by a pause and then repeated. From across the way, an answer came, filling the pauses, and waiting for a reply.
Back and forth the two birds called to one another, as if their sole mission was to mark the opening of the buds. And their song went on and on.
Yesterday I photographed her when she came for breakfast, her plumage fluffed up against the day’s sharp cold, and thought how a certain tenderness rose inside me at the sight of her subtle colors. She, whose mate is so flamboyantly red, is the modest one of the pair. Today, a sudden wind hurled her against my window pane and she fell, dead, beneath it. In the blowing snow I gathered her soft body and found a protected place for her beneath the ancient spruce I call The Guardian. What a terrible emptiness it leaves inside us when a dear one goes.
