Monday, April 14, 2014

Spring



"Podrán cortar todas las flores, pero no podrán detener la primavera."
You can cut the flowers, but you can't stop spring.
- Pablo Neruda -



Over the past few weeks Spring has been spreading like an army marching into a barren and subdued land.  A land unwilling to put up any resistance to the overwhelming power created by warmer temperatures and longer hours of sun.  Initially it was just a few scouts.  A wasp, emerging slowly and clumsily from his over-wintering hideaway.  A tick to remind us that no matter how strong and tall we are, we can be brought down by something tiny.  Daffodils bravely emerging from the ground just in time for the last snow of the season.  




Then there is the morning I do a double-take at the forest floor.  I blink.  Squint. What I had thought brown now appears green.  Misidentification of color is a disconcerting thought for someone who uses color daily to express oneself, so I take a closer look.  Thousands of tiny green shapes have emerged out of the blanket of decomposing leaves.  From experience I know that many of these will grow into thorny vines and a dense carpet of poison ivy, but for the moment they are merely waiting.  Spring has won.  It has descended upon a land already waving brown-white branches of surrender.  It could take its time now, if it were so inclined, but that isn't the nature of spring.  Spring is too busy unfurling, sprouting, opening, growing, reaching, blossoming, and budding to pay attention to our attempts to grab it, capture it, or slow it down.  Spring is here now but it knows summer is fast on its heels.  Carpe diem, Spring.  




I'm riding in the car with my mom and one of her friends who tells us a story of her son. "He came home one day and said, 'The fields were so green they hurt my eyes.'"  The fields we are passing at the time are a green typically reserved just for Ireland but temporarily allowed to clothe Tennessee farmland.  



Spring's banner might be green, but it brings with it all the colors of a sunset.  The Kentucky fields we pass the next day form swaths of purple and yellow.  The interstate on both sides of the "Welcome" signs are bordered by miles of redbuds.  My beloved forest floors, once white with snow, once brown with leaves, once just-freshly green with tiny hints of plants to come, is now sprinkled with tiny jewels.  Spring beauty.  Elegant, serious trillium.  Tiny violets hovering a scant three inches out of the leaves.  A chance to use those vivid colors in my artist palette that had begun to feel like a waste of space.  No.  Spring has come and with it color.  






I too surrender, trading my thick coat and flannel shirts, the diminished pile of firewood, and my recipes for snow ice cream for short-sleeves, watercolors in the woods, and breezes through the window.  Welcome, Spring.