Signs of Spring
This morning, three young deer fed in the garden a hundred feet below the porch on the lower portion of the property. I wished them a happy dawn, then turned on my heels back into the house where my yoga mat was set up and ready. I saluted the morning with a series of sun salutations as the soft light gave way to brightness and the deer slowly moved on through the forest.
On the trek down to the car, about a third of a mile on steep grade, there were bluets (the moth, not the flower) and sweet, purple violets coloring the path. Dogs barked in the distance and I thought about bears, wondering where they might sleep on this mountain and if I’d be blessed enough to see one. Past the first spring (I think it’s a spring, anyway – water just comes out the side of the moutain!), hop over the puddles from the next spring, round the gate, and down to my car. It’s about a seven minute walk down, fifteen minutes up (if that doesn’t tell you how steep it is, I don’t know what will) and already I love it.
When it comes to trees, it’s the buckeyes that are blooming first up here on Fork Mountain. Two days ago, the branch that stretches its finger-like twigs to the edge of the porch had only a dozen visible buds on it. By sunset last night, small fireworks of lime green erupted from those buds and more could be seen that were about to burst. At dusk tonight, more than I could count and they stretched up and down the length of each branch, high into the sky. Still small and fleshy, almost like starfish, the new leaves of the buckeye flopped side to side in the slight breeze.
With sunset came the half moon, wide and bright in all its brilliance. The overflow from the spring gushed and gushed, siphoned downhill past the garden and on into the forest. Abundance abounds and I can feel my voice coming back to me. And it has less and less to do with words than I like to admit. That’s because really, it has everything to do with seeing the world in a particular kind of way. Up here in this new world, it feels as though my sense have been re-given to me. My words can come anew, my breath born in each instant, my heart pulsing gratitude out through my veins and into the core of the earth.