Rights Of Spring
There’s a brief moment in early spring—usually in the first week—when a perfect freshness unfolds. The balance of light tilts to favor the “out of doors”. Clean air streams inside. Fordhook’s 60 acres of forest, meadow and gardens flash in the sun.
I enjoy the “species” quality of spring. By July the jumbled, generic woods seem incoherent and mute in comparison. Now I can savor tree structure and delight in the rare, ephemeral forms of the shrubs. Even roots seem to appear and dance around like ghosts. So much life! So vivid are the forests and every single tree.
Water is a constant: in air, sky, wind and mist. It permeates the soil, slickens the trunks and stems, and slips underfoot. Rainstorms come fast and hard and finish slow and gentle, as if sad to be going.
Winter, like summer, had such a static quality—almost numbing the senses—formal and masked with snow. Spring dances in and out so quickly, like a dart of green light. Perhaps this is why the goddess capers about the other seasons, in and out, here and there.
Notice when people smile, their personalities appear? Making them unique, specific, individual—apart from the masses? Until the smile, nothing but Homo sapiens. Thus are the transitional seasons to me, and especially newborn spring. I get to know Fordhook most in the fall and spring, each year new bits, and a deeper understanding.
Your descriptions and insights have me hankering for Spring in the land of woodlands and trees. Here on the High Plains, observing Spring is like observing a bully and a sensitive child on the teeter-totter. The sensitive child (Spring) just wants to linger and play, gently, enjoying his time outside. But the bully (Summer’s heat) just stomps on the far end and catapults the other child up up and away.
This is lovely, thank you for sharing. I especially like the bit about the rain. I was walking in the city with my roommates on Sunday, enjoying the buds on the street trees and the fresh, open sky above the buildings, when the light drizzle suddenly turned into a fast, heavy pour. My roommates scurried back to their car, but I felt wonderfully enlivened and continued walking around until the rain slowed back to a drizzle again, which took only a matter of minutes. Fall is a very romantic time of year, but spring is undoubtedly the most beautiful.