Every spring, the forest inhales
and holds it breath. The air is laden with expectations of new life, a
ballooned world rich with foreboding and tension. During this time, the world
is brown with speckles of new green. The aspens are heavy with blossoms that
resemble tentacled pussy willows waving in a whiff of breeze. In less than a
week, the blooms begin to shrivel up into little brown strings that look more
dead than alive.
Though I adore winter, this may
be my favorite part of spring. I begin to notice grasses, golden all winter, flushed
with green blush. The ducks, robins, and the small birds that look suspiciously
like whippoorwills fill the air with sound. Frogs in chorus croak and rasp. They
remind me of cicadas and crickets from Missouri’s sultry summer nights.
One unexpected morning, I look
out the window by my bed and see the tree by the woodpile. What large leaf
buds! How could I have missed the trees budding out? A closer look reveals that
the trees are all budding and close to leafing out in the denouement of spring.
I notice that the wild cherry trees have thin leaflets poking out from fragile
stems, the rose bushes push forth their wispy leaves from between their thorns,
and the lilac cuttings from our last home are lowering their green spears and
will soon unfurl into soft shapes. If I blink, I know I’ll miss that exhale
when the whole world grows up for another season of life and virility.
My transplanted wild violets are
in bloom and, every day, I check the clumps of twin flower, my personal
favorite, that grow on the northwest sides of random trees. The first mature
green leaves in spring, I wait for their pixie-sized stems to form, for their
duel-branched flowers to curve toward the many-layered mulch of dead aspen leaves,
and for their miniature translucent pinks and white bells to flash up from the forest
floor. The child in me wonders what it would be like to be smaller than an inch,
wandering free through woodland halls of blooming twin flowers, unseen by the
mountainous giants that thunder by my little trickling streams and deep mossy
bowers.
When I imagine such an enchanting
microcosm, I have a habit of craning my neck back and looking straight up through
the overarching branches at the bright blue sky. The microcosm I live in is far
vaster than any I might ever imagine. Besides, who says that the trees that
curve about me couldn’t become giant flowers one day? It’s true, I openly
refuse to grow up. Maturity is great, but to lose my imagination would make life
dry, common, and dull. Who in their right mind wants to live that way? The
world is so fascinating that I could never permit such a bland outlook on that
which is an ever-changing myriad of kaleidoscope details. Could you?
Love,
Jenny
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