The World Revealed Again

Two weeks ago, at the cabin everything felt raw. Piles of snow were everywhere, while last year’s battered grasses were crumpled on the ground. But last week, with most of the snow melted, I sensed spring:  a lightness and clarity to the air, breezes almost soft.  

Life is slowly returning to the mountains: small green shoots of a plant, which it’s too early to identify, are coming up alongside the garage; and the creeks are running again, so fast that dirt is being stirred up, muddying the waters. As I sat outside, a young chipmunk approached, the first one I’ve seen since last fall when the chipmunks and ground squirrels went into hibernation. Best of all, the aspens are budding out (above), although it will be another month until the leaves appear.

With the snow mostly gone, humans’ stuff buried over the winter is revealed: a plastic chair that got blown into the wild rose bushes by the road, a large orange utility pail and Christmas wreath stuck among the aspens, and another chair blown down near the creek. I’m also seeing the damage from our strong winter winds: trees on the ground, cracked in half or branches broken off. In the back yard, I pulled up a young thin aspen that had been weighted down by the snow.  I anchored it with a log, and I’m hoping it will survive.

Strangely, I’m finding bird feathers everywhere; stuck among the pine needless or in the grasses. The long ones (right) must be from the wild turkeys that walk past my cabin every morning to get to my neighbor’s place, where she puts food out for them. But there are also short, downy feathers, as if they came from newborns. But the birds are just starting to nest, so these soft feathers are a mystery.  

Two weeks ago, I saw my first mountain bluebird of the season, and last week I was captivated by the sight of a vulture riding the strong winds, its wings constantly readjusting to fit the flow of air, swirling in every direction across the valley.

But spring is never far from winter, and more snow is forecast for this week. Yet spring’s quickening pulse won’t be denied. Nature is preparing itself for a giant release, working at the root level, getting ready to break through: to reveal what has been hidden.

Comments

[Julene A Bair]

Welcome signs, except for the plastic detritus. So cool you're finding bird feathers though.

[Julene A Bair]

And with every change of the seasons come your vivid insights and reflections. They never fail to ground me and inspire my own observations and attentiveness.