The perfume of gasping stomata begins my morning as I walk outside to greet the day. Inhale, exhale. It is that greatest of olfactory medicinals that suddenly wakes my mind, like a winterworn cabin whose windows and doors are flung open with abandon on its first day of spring. Fresh air pools in the hidden nooks, waking joy, gratefulness, and a new awareness of how many dog turds are still hidden in the yard, waiting for the right moment to let slip.
When cool wind turns to warm breeze, my bones smile and the instinct to bundle and shy slowly melts away to the instinct of heliotropic embrace. The pigeon of spring comes by wing, always knowing its way, homing home. That’s pretty coo.
As midday crests, the sun’s rays pull blood to the surface of my skin; a solar tide upon my iron waters. My face warms and toasts, my nostrils flare, and the robin’s randy hollers turns to but a bard’s flitting ballad in my ear. The romance of hope becomes assumed as spring supplants the desperation of hungry winter.
The days are long and the season is short, but it is in the shoulders of reckoning that I am reminded of why this time of year brings me so much joy. Spring is a season of moments. Summer is the antithesis of winter’s torpor, in which we hum with consistency and labor, ourselves bumbling away with carefree speed. Fall does not counter spring, but I feel is instead the days contrarianist of long tooth. Days shorten yet time waxes poetic. We catch our cool breezes and prepare for the winter slumber. It is the deserved nightcap at the end of a day fulfilled. Winter does slow us, but moreso is our dream season. The world changes shapes and forms to alien familiarity, like seeing a dear cousin after many years, grown haggard by way of smiling crows feet.
Spring, though, again, is the moments. When our eyes flutter awake with birdsong; when light comes before alarms; when we begin to manifest all we longed for during the dreamt night. We finish planning our gardens, mapping our adventures, and listing our chores across the land. We dot our teas and cross our eyes as theory blossoms to reality and all its unexpected bliss. We prepare and deliver the gift of dirty hands to the world, to our home, to our other living neighbors. We smile inadvertently at ladybirds as our winter beaks creak, and joy finds us in the family reunion of shared coexistence.
So this spring, don’t forget to let the moments find you, and when they do, take a second of your own to appreciate this one and only shared world. Smell the hope of longer days, and fulfill the promised smile of chores well-laid and well-done. Get dirty, smelly, tore up, and tired. Scoop poop. Plant seeds. Watch the world’s moments become memories, and memories become you.
I’m Patrick Kelly and I’m Wild About Utah.
Credits:
Images: Seedling Image Courtesy Pixabay, Public Domain, https://pixabay.com/photos/seedling-seed-agriculture-field-7862273/
Audio: Contains audio Courtesy & Copyright Kevin Colver https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections and J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin.
Text: Patrick Kelly, Director of Education, Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org
Included Links: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org
Additional Reading
Patrick Kelly’s portfolio of pieces for Wild About Utah
Watch the world’s moments become memories
