I journeyed into my northern woods
this late April morning seeking Spring.
Having departed to downstate a month earlier surrounded by heavy white
drifts and swirling snow I hoped spring had finally crept into the forest, if
not spring in its full magnificence, at least signs of spring. Not so, not yet. A few brave green shoots poked through the
brown oak leaves. My beloved sugar maple
did display tiny buds and of course the soft white pine whispered, “See I never
deserted you all winter, I am still here.
Green and glorious.”
But my disappointment was short lived when I buried my anticipation. I stuck my hopes
for trillium and morels in my pocket and I just looked. As Wendell Berry says in his poem, “The
Thought of Something Else,” (Selected
Poems, p. 23)
“or
a man can be
safely
without thought
--see
the day begin
and
lean back,
a
simple wakefulness filling
perfect
the
spaces among the leaves."
I looked up at a broken tree with a wondrous
woodpecker hole. I stared down at monster fungus with multiple
eyes staring back. I jumped slightly when
I witnessed another face, this one in a tree stump, laughing at me. I almost felt sad I couldn’t share these
pictures with a group of fifth graders.
What delightful stories they could have fantasized.
At one point I was angered all over
again at the uninvited, pirate wood choppers who ventured into our woods and
chopped fireplace logs out of the grandchildren’s “balance beam,” a
fallen tree situated just perfectly for “tightrope” walking and flying off. But I
put anger in my pocket next to anticipation when I observed that the pirates had
left the stump with its intricate design which I am positive spelled, “Leave me
be.”
Sticking to my agenda, all these
natural noticings I would have missed.
Spring is late this year, but the silent stories nature gives us are
not.
