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)

Perpetual Astonishment

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

Ever so slowly, nearly imperceptibly, Spring is finding its way into our corner of the world. It is premature to say, I know, especially since March and April are typically the snowiest months in Denver, but I have walked these fields and the darkened paths for so long that my eyes are hungry for change.

It was another lovely day with temperatures hovering around 70˚, a warm breeze sifting through the last of the once-leaves, chasing them across the parking lot and scattering them down the wide avenues. The finches were singing in the trees outside the patio where Jeffrey's once-feral cat hunts, and a few golfers appeared on the yellow greens of the golf course. The park was blessedly empty but full of life, with flocks of heavy, black crows croaking from the naked tree limbs while squirrels ran erratic circles around their trunks.

Dunc jogged far ahead, his nose pulling him from one boggy patch of earth to the next, his tail propelling him forward as he went. I found him sitting in the center of the walk at the edge of the baseball diamonds, his back to me, his face turned rapturously into the sun. He barely noticed my arrival and it wasn't until I stepped beside him and rested my hand on his narrow shoulder that he turned, his tongue hanging out, a grin spread wide across his face. We stood a long moment together, not moving, looking up into the blue, the warmth of the sun kissing our faces, blessing and encouraging us for these last few difficult weeks of winter.

He led me to the baseball fields, which have been been cleaned and painted and then back out onto the wide soccer fields, where the posts have already been erected and the grounds marked for the hoards which will no doubt arrive this weekend. He galloped and rolled in the dry grass, the barren trees and stark color a backdrop to his glorious red. It would have been easy to feel discouraged by the weight of these too-short days and the early nights still creeping upon us, to sigh discontentedly at the dry yellow, if Duncan hadn't searched out and found a small, hardly visible patch of greening grass to roll in.

The world is changing and we are eager to change with it. There is hope and light and green to be found under the vast expanse of blue.