June 19, 2021
[In 2018, I completed essays on three of four seasons. Here at last is the final essay in the set, on my favorite of all seasons: Spring.]
I’ve always loved Spring. Ever since my first spring in VA, 1981. I had never witnessed such a metamorphosis in my life. The rippling fields of poppies in the high desert winds of interior CA could not compete. We had no flowering trees to celebrate, no leafy bounty about which to marvel, no phosphorescent green, an unmistakable sign of the resolute strength of life and its renewal. That first spring on the W&M campus I walked in amazement when not sunning (way too much) on “Botetourt Beach.” I literally spent the months of April and May sun-drunk and leaf-inebriated.
But this spring, after months of pandemic, I realized how much I’ve come to rely on seeing the young this season propagates. Not just the new-green and blossoms, but the baby rabbits with their translucent ears, the ducklings swimming as a single body, the goslings, the fledglings, the fawns hidden in foliage, the CW lambs. And this year, the three knobby-kneed foals pastured in CW with their handsome, healthy dams.
It’s not that I’m obsessed with babies or youth, it’s that I find deep hope in new life and its resilient continuation. It’s exactly the waking tonic I need after the settled and contemplative quiet of winter.
Every spring, there is something unexpected, and I’ve learned to count on it: that element of unanticipated good, which can take the form of tiny land turtles the size of quarters laboring their way to water, or juvenile green snakes, slim as pencils, slithering from trail to grass — even the conversation made with strangers, as we all stagger in wonder, our eyes reopened.
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