I Am in Every Spring

Snowbells in the yard

Today I have faith that spring is here. The landscape looks a bit greener, the breeze a bit fresher, the sun a bit milder. Three big patches of snowbells brighten up parts of the lawn. The buds on the lilac bushes have swollen to the point of showing a hint of green leaves.

The most stunning change is in the number and noise of birds. Six fat robins were trilling at each other in my front yard, each of the three pairs sound-marking some territory. My big sugar maple will function, I hope, as a robin apartment building. Surely there is enough room for all. Right now it is a building under construction--just the frame/branches without the leaves/drywall.

Sugar maple in early spring

Out here at work, a robin pecks the mulch outside my window every morning. He or she is plump and sleek, fluffed out for r-value against the chill. Peck. Peck. Flick. Grab. Swallow. Down the hatch goes a grub. There's a pond out here and evergreens around it--more a subdivision for birds than my maple apartment building.

One time when I was camping with a random group of people one of them guided us through listening for birds...he had us attend to the gradual increase in the number and diversity of songs as we ourselves quieted down. And, speaking softly, he encouraged us to stretch out our hearing, to listen for the sounds behind the sounds...and a multilayered orchestration of birds emerged. I've never forgotten this lesson in listening--listening with depth perception.

American robin

Out here at work, we've got a wind tunnel going--the exhaust fans in the shop suck air under the front door all day long, creating a moaning, mournful sound that makes me think of the song "Shenandoah." The brisk wind then sweeps the despair along...get along, sorrow...get along, woe.

I ordered plants--dozens of periwinkle seedlings to start a ground cover under the new shrubs I planted last fall. My fingers itch to dig in the soil. Maybe a new trowel is in order. And I am about to order a huge load of river rock to landscape on the dry, shady side of the house. Then I can put in some daffodil bulbs to come up among the bare rocks in the spring. And then I think I'll get a load of white gravel to make a peace sign in the middle.

Daffodil growing among rocks

Oh that we could all live on the cusp of change like the seasons do. There is never a time when nature is not becoming something else; transitioning; more ebbing and more flowing than the tides. It's us, us humans, that think somehow that a condition can be frozen, that for a certain period of time it will "be" spring or "be" summer when truly summer is always becoming from spring and becoming into fall. I always thought there would be a time when I would "be" grown up and that I would recognize that condition and...and...stop becoming.

The seeds of my old age were in my youth and now in middle age the seeds of youth are still sprouting alongside the seeds of aging and death. I'm every season, every age, every day.

Morels--an Appalachian treat

I was going to say that only in death does the becoming cease, but in nature there is not even death. My body will continue to change until it is unrecognizable except for its presence in every other living thing. I am released to new possibilities. Becoming and becoming...I can't get around it. Spring comes every year, but it is not the same spring. It's a new spring. And it's an old spring. And every spring has me in it. And always did. And always will.