The Promise of Spring

 

The spring peepers told me it was time for a trip to the holler.  I came home late one night a couple of weeks ago and heard their spring chorus.  Even though the wind was still chilly and the trees were still bare, it was obvious that spring was creeping in.  Spring always reminds me of a timid swimmer, poking a toe in the water to see if the water is too cold, then jerking back over and over until the temptation is too strong.  After I heard the peepers, the following night I was out getting the dogs in and heard wild geese, honking under the half moon and my heart was lifted.  Isn’t it funny how wild geese calling is such a sad sound in the fall, but such an uplifting sound in March?  I am hearing them almost nightly now, especially at dusk.  And the morning bird song has a new urgency, as nest building and courting begin in earnest.  On my way to church last Sunday, I saw a heron in the little pond beside the road, and yesterday the bees were searching my shrubbery for early blooms.

I searched out my walking stick, called to the dogs and began the climb down the path to my wildflower haven.  I wore the wrong shoes, and had to slip and slide and favor my bad ankle, but the sight of the first clump of bloodroot beside the path made the trip worth the trouble. 

I can remember years when the western bluffs near the river bottom held a carpet of white in the early spring, and I’m glad some of the plants we moved nearer to the house took hold and return every year.  I love the dainty white blooms and how the lobed leaves fold up around them in the evening, cradling them from the chilly night until the sun kisses them open again.  The Native Americans used the reddish sap from the root as a dye and also used the roots for medicine, although I have been told it can be poisonous in large amounts.  The blooms are short-lived, so if you don’t visit at just the right time, you might miss them.  The leaves do make a big show on their own, after the blooms drop, getting larger and larger until they go dormant.

The bluebells were showing pink buds, which in another week or so will develop into a sea of blue, and a few trout lilies poked timidly out of the dead leaves.  The spurge showed its feathery blooms and a few toothwort were blooming.  I was surprised to see a couple of purple trillium in full bloom, at the foot of a tree where maybe they are sheltered from the cold winds.  And I was relieved to see the shooting star, just beginning to put out green leaves.

I sat for a few minutes on a moss covered rock, listening to the murmur of the branch at the foot of the hill.  Sophie and Scout did their impressions of Mufasa, surveying their kingdom from another rock.  Thin sunshine filled the silence of the woods, and I was reminded that this spot is a thin place, where the wall between heaven and here is almost invisible.

One of the dead trees from last year is almost gone – it is only half as tall as before and the holes in the truck are larger.  I expect it may be gone by next spring.  But the goblin tree is still there.  I wish my Aunt Mary could see it.  She is the great aunt who taught me to look for fairies in the woods and that magic might be real.  She would have a story about the faces trapped in that tree and how they got there.  I always think of the Tolkien books when I see the tree, or the story of Merlin trapped in a tree by Nimue.

The climb back up the hill was easier than the trek down the trail.  I stopped on the way to check out the columbine, one of the last remnants from plants gathered almost fifty years ago from an old spring near the river bottom.  It is still there, at the foot of a tree among a patch of bluebells, also started from a few bulbs from the same area.  I am thankful each year that, no matter what happens over the winter, I can count on these old friends – the bluebells, the trout lilies, the trillium, the bloodroot and the dutchman’s britches.  They are a precious gift.