Look to the Trees

Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment. (Ellis Peters)

Yesterday on our first walk, while Duncan paused to sniff in the bushes for Oliver, the Siamese kitten who has only just been allowed to begin exploring the world outside of his patio, I stopped to look at the Linden tree that grows right below my window. Only a few furls of green dotted the dark branches, bright and new, damp with morning dew. Last year at this time the entire tree was adorned and was threatening to unleash its magnificent flowers nearly two months ahead of schedule. Linden is Latvian for July, which is when the tree blooms, painting the bleached, bone-white dog days with bright yellow blossoms and filling my apartment with one of my favorite scents. This year, however, Spring is running behind schedule and the greening has been slow but agonizingly exquisite.

This morning when we ventured out, Duncan again stopped to investigate for signs of the elusive Oliver, and I caught my breath at the sight of the very same tree rising up out of the shrubs, its uppermost branches brushing against my window. It had erupted in leaves, and yesterday's tiny moth wings of green were now flags, bright with certainty against the morning blue.

The same thing happened at The Glen.

In twenty-four hours the Narrow Leaf Cottonwoods (the scourge of my existence) had exploded with leaves, and they aren't done yet. By this afternoon they were even more full and the air was sweet in the way I've been yearning for since September when Autumn became an inevitability and the leaves began to drop in great depressing clumps.

Each Spring is a precious thing, and each time I walk through it I feel as though I am witnessing it for the first time, and appreciate it as though it could be my last. There is no time of year when I feel more alive, more connected to the world. Every morning and every afternoon bring the kind of delight I remember from childhood Christmas mornings. Anything feels possible and everything seems attainable.

What a difference a single day can make, and if you ever doubt that you need only look to the trees on a Spring day.

It's spring fever.  That is what the name of it is.  And when you've got it, 

you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, 

but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! (Mark Twain)