When spring rides in, they tell me, wherever her pony steps, coltsfoot grows. I believe them. The pony’s step is light. It flies more than it prances, touching ground just here and there, when spring pauses to take in the view or to plant special flowers. Years ago, I found one of her favored spots and I return each year seeking evidence of her visit. This year, I confess, I climbed with apprehension. Last fall, workers dozed a path at the very edge of the woods that circle the reservoir, exactly where the coltsfoot has always grown. Would spring still pause here? Could coltsfoot rise through this packed clay? The leaves were wet. I had to climb carefully. Then, half way up the hill, I stopped to gaze up its slope, and there they were, patches of them, little sun-coins, beaming yellow rays right into my heart. Coltsfoot, I beamed back at them, whispering their name. She was here! She was here!
Sometimes, when I’m just bobbling down the stream, living my ordinary life, I’ll wonder to myself, “What shall I write in this week’s Sunday Letter?” This week, I kept hearing the faint whisper of the word “encouragement.”
Well, heck yes! Of course I want to encourage. Who couldn’t use a bucket or two of that nowadays? I mean, look around. It’s a wreck out there. And sometimes the wreck even spills into our very own lives.
But where to start? Maybe, I thought, I could get some ideas from my quotes file. When I opened it to “Encouragement,” the very first one I read, a line from a Karen Moning novel, made me laugh: “It’s just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it’s time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.”
What wonderful advice! Think about what it’s really saying. If you’re going to face a world that’s falling apart, you need to shore up your self-confidence, by remembering who you are, and wrapping yourself in that knowledge.
That brought me to a second quote from my file: “She remembered who she was, and that changed everything.”
And just who are you? One of those most complex of creatures – a human, being here, wherever here is, doing the best you can with what you got. That’s one of the things that identifies us as human, I think. We keep trying to do the best we can with whatever resources we can discover.
Sometimes those resources can seem mighty slim. Sometimes they seem no match for the wreck outside the door. We all get discouraged and bruised along the way. We make mistakes, take wrong turns. We underrate ourselves and our resilience and ingenuity. But that’s exactly when we need to pull down the drapes and whip up a smarter costume. Try on a smile. Shine your shoes. Straighten your shoulders. So far, after all, you have managed to get from one moment to the next, all the way to this one, right? You have momentum on your side, not to mention buckets of tools and talents, and, of course, the life force itself.
Long story, but I found myself telling a friend the childhood tale about the little red engine that had to climb a big, steep hill, pulling a big, heavy train behind him. He was undaunted, this brave little engine, and he kept saying to himself with every turn of his wheels, “I think I can, I think I can,” until he made it all the way to the top.
I think you can, too.
I’ll leave you with one final quote from my file by singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. It’s a good one to remember. “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”
You’re shining so boldly, and I was so glad to see you, that at first I didn’t notice, little daffodil, that you felt shy. I understand. You’re the first one. There’s no one here to tell you that you are unfolding perfectly, and that you will love it here, where rain and sun dance and stars sparkle at night and a gazillion green things grow all around you. You’ll see. Soon, your friends will open, too, and you will tell them that they are doing it perfectly, and all of you will boldly shine.
I’m washing dishes when I spot them— another spring surprise, suddenly arrived. They seem to make their campground in the same space every year, half way down the south hill. I never see them marching into place. But you can tell that’s what they were doing. They come before the grasses and the rest of the green and settle at the base of the ancient maple. There they stop, raise their lemon-lime flags, and laugh until the sound grabs you: Hello! I dry my hands, pull on my boots, and climb the hill to greet them—today’s gift—to let them know I heard them shouting out their song and to share with them this draft of welcome joy.
Rain fell all day. But some time after noon it paused, as if to get a breath, to replenish its clouds. I threw on a jacket and boots and set about searching along the path that leads beneath the quince at the base of the southern hill. I’m on the lookout for baby ferns. Not yet, I see. Not yet. But look at that chorus of stems standing at attention on that heap of moss, raindrops dripping from their green hats. And there, a patch of those round little mushrooms, and the bud beginning to swell on the quince. Then, as I turned to go back to the house, I saw them – Spring Beauties! I blinked in disbelief. They unfailingly surprise me, appearing before I expect them, tiny fairies, so delicate, so filled with light and grace. “I love you, springtime,” I whisper to the woods and the sky, fully trusting them to deliver my message just where it should go. “Even in rain, springtime. Even in the rain.”
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.
