A simple blog about spring

 By Mary Kay Roth

Birdsong dazzles on these early mornings at Holmes Lake with the trill and tweet of a dawn choir calling out over an enchanted land newly baptized and rebirthed.  

The glories of April days are upon us, mystical days, when we watch the world around us move from iron-gray to fairyland green. Or parsley green.  Glade green. Emerald green. (I can never get the description of that color quite right.)

Pairs of red-tailed hawks court, robins twitter and bounce through the boughs, skeins of loud-mouthed geese punctuate a high blue sky. Resilient worms wiggle across our path.  Grasslands start to whisper their intentions.  

And the rhythms of earth throb with the pulse of spring.

Yes, I know, so many exquisite words, poems and songs have been written about this season – from the likes of Thoreau to Mary Oliver to Simon and Garfunkel. 

But that doesn’t matter to me on this luminous Sunday, walking around a lake I love on a morning that feels like a love song drunk on dew.

Because – it’s just this simple – I want to write a blog about spring. 

Despite the embarrassment of a shotgun-toting governor’s race. Despite all the lingering variants of the ongoing coronavirus.  Despite the shock of Ukraine.  

Spring still shows up, like a fizzy tonic that drizzles fresh, warm rain upon us, opens blossoms, thaws the land and greens the grasses.    

And the light, oh god, the light washing over us, “a light that only exists in spring,” says Emily Dickinson – as we track the arc of the sun creeping across the equator line, shifting toward the north. 

And the smell, oh god, the smell, equal parts grass and earthen breath, rain and dirt, a fragrant balm that no measure of scientific genius can reproduce.

Admittedly, we live in a collectively exhausted world, overextended, and stressed.  Life is messy with the inevitable dichotomy of good times and bad.  Who cares that while the planet spins around at more than 1,000 mph – it tilts.  

And yet – despite the weariness of our world – our plains and prairies and forests and parks are all shaking off winter’s frozen grip, business as usual.  “Come in, we’re open…” 

Some call this season a quiet awakening, but I find it rowdy and busting out all over. Woodpeckers are drumming to the beat of an orchestra playing sweet harmonies of cardinals, purple finches, song sparrows – and, just this morning, a meadowlark.  

Anytime soon we’ll hear the spring peepers who sing from every wet patch of ground in the woods – marvel at determined dandelions sprouting practically everywhere – witness the bare, leafless branches of maple trees beginning to cast their reddish glow. Soon every living tree in our town will burst into leaf. 

Spring is green and tender and shockingly alive. 

It is bike racers and marathoners in training.

It is muddy ground and flowing creeks and sandhill cranes dancing in the Platte.  Lawnmowers roaring out of hibernation while flannel-lined coats pile high in the back of the closet. 

It is saying goodbye to those little grayish wonders, the juncos – hello to robins and wrens and warblers.

Spring is balmy breezes – sunlight on our skin – cotton sheets and chimes and barbecue grills – the first crocus poking up – hands in the dirt dug deep down.

So, by god, I will write-sing-shout about spring, because I believe we lose something essential if we fail to celebrate the stunning fact that life is fiercely jump-starting all over again. 

Please join me today as I climb a tree, sow seeds, spring-clean the heck out of the cobwebs, curl bare toes deep into the beginnings of fresh grass – as I open my windows wide and holler to the heavens, “welcome back.”

Join me at dawn … as I turn my face skyward, on this most glorious of all spring mornings, feel the grace of the sun and offer a joyously noisy, deafening, riotous prayer of thanks. 

Because in this most sacred season of dreamers and imaginers – this season of those who still believe in silly wonder and those who still believe in hope – we have been given a precious gift. Despite the darkest of dark days, yes indeed, light and life do come around again.