Green Beginnings

As I stood in the sunshine on our hill in the Lanark Highlands, a returning loon, the first of the season, flew overhead toward the lake, singing its heart out in sheer unfettered gladness to be home again, and a grosbeak in the unpublished canopy lifted its voice to the blue sky overhead.

Oh the wonders that awaited up the trail... The first Bloodroot buds were popping out of the dead leaves like tiny white candles, and gloriously spotted leaves of the Trout Lily were everywhere underfoot - two or three specimens were blooming near sun warmed rocks on the slope down to the fast flowing creek. Columbine leaves were visible here and there, and tiny nosegays of Hepatica and Spring Beauty were in bud everywhere we looked.

Dutchman's Breeches were blooming in protected crannies, and there was a splendid clump about thirty feet up a vertical rock face in the gorge. The colony has been there for years, and as always, I stood down below with camera, telephoto and field notebook trying to figure out how I could get closer - climb up or drop down, hang over the edge, perhaps rappel up there and dangle like a monkey, nose to nose with that splendid flowering? Not this time, people were watching me....

There was a cold north wind in the open fields, but it was good just to be standing there, watching and listening as the northern world percolated gently and Mama Gaia sent up buds and flowers and green tendrils everywhere like magic. That is exactly what springtime is, a great and elemental magic - it is pure enchantment, the stuff of which art and dreams and wonder and enlightenment are made.