The four seasons felt like home when I first started to experience them 14 years ago. That is to say, when I started living in Spokane and felt deep in my bones the crisp Fall, chilling winter, unpredictable Spring, and piping hot summer. I love all four equally, especially how they seem to arrive at just the moment I am tiring of the current season. Yet Spring has remained the most elusive. I love her, and also find her quite confounding.
For centuries poets have celebrated the very real and very spiritual notions of renewal and rebirth represented by the return of the sun. When flowers I had only ever seen in bouquets or paintings began to spring from the ground, I was captivated by color and cheerfulness. First, the crocus, then daffodils, followed by tulips and irises, then lilacs. Some of these purple, yellow, red, orange, pink and lavender buds were in carefully tended beds in magnificently arranged order. Others were so random and sporadic it seemed the flowers predated the house whose yard they glorified.
When the mornings started out just above freezing and included sleet, rain, patchy gray, toasty sun, and seering blue skies all in the span of a work day, the patches of color calmed the nerves and brought a sense of steadiness to an otherwise unpredictable season. Then, the unthinkable happened. These beauties wilted, shriveled, and drooped.
I felt cheated and full of despair. The classics in literature, from which I had chiefly formed my dreams of spring, left me completely unprepared for the death that quickly followed each burst of color. Of course I had noted the demise of flowers when propped in vases, but that made sense, considering they were ripped from their natural environment and left without nutrients to survive in a human-designed space with all its artifices. Flowers out-of-doors, with roots firmly grounded, that still keeled over left me struggling for several Springs running with polarizing notes of joy and sadness.
This Spring, the weather hasn't been quite so topsy-turvy. And yesterday, while walking a half marathon along the banks of the Spokane River, I finally understood. Spring is a season of nearly uncountable acts of renewal and rebirth. Just as one flower wilts, another bursts forth. Every day, if we take the time to look, there is something new and alive to notice. And flowers are only a small piece of the beauty. The maples, hawthorns, service berries, and magnolias all take their turn at wowing us with vibrant buds that turn to shimmering green leaves. Bundles of balsam root dot the hills like bouquets dropped from heaven.
Then there is the river. It fills to the brim and runs with a quickness that inspires. It reaches the Falls, where power and energy combine to tumble around boulders with surprising grace.
I know now it is not the death that matters in Spring, it is the constant sense that life continues, that a fresh start is always just around the bend.
For centuries poets have celebrated the very real and very spiritual notions of renewal and rebirth represented by the return of the sun. When flowers I had only ever seen in bouquets or paintings began to spring from the ground, I was captivated by color and cheerfulness. First, the crocus, then daffodils, followed by tulips and irises, then lilacs. Some of these purple, yellow, red, orange, pink and lavender buds were in carefully tended beds in magnificently arranged order. Others were so random and sporadic it seemed the flowers predated the house whose yard they glorified.
When the mornings started out just above freezing and included sleet, rain, patchy gray, toasty sun, and seering blue skies all in the span of a work day, the patches of color calmed the nerves and brought a sense of steadiness to an otherwise unpredictable season. Then, the unthinkable happened. These beauties wilted, shriveled, and drooped.
I felt cheated and full of despair. The classics in literature, from which I had chiefly formed my dreams of spring, left me completely unprepared for the death that quickly followed each burst of color. Of course I had noted the demise of flowers when propped in vases, but that made sense, considering they were ripped from their natural environment and left without nutrients to survive in a human-designed space with all its artifices. Flowers out-of-doors, with roots firmly grounded, that still keeled over left me struggling for several Springs running with polarizing notes of joy and sadness.
This Spring, the weather hasn't been quite so topsy-turvy. And yesterday, while walking a half marathon along the banks of the Spokane River, I finally understood. Spring is a season of nearly uncountable acts of renewal and rebirth. Just as one flower wilts, another bursts forth. Every day, if we take the time to look, there is something new and alive to notice. And flowers are only a small piece of the beauty. The maples, hawthorns, service berries, and magnolias all take their turn at wowing us with vibrant buds that turn to shimmering green leaves. Bundles of balsam root dot the hills like bouquets dropped from heaven. Then there is the river. It fills to the brim and runs with a quickness that inspires. It reaches the Falls, where power and energy combine to tumble around boulders with surprising grace.I know now it is not the death that matters in Spring, it is the constant sense that life continues, that a fresh start is always just around the bend.
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