Some Awakings are Greater than Others

In front of my house, I have noticed the crocuses, hyacinths, and daffodils emerging from their year-long slumber. Their tender green blades have always been a source of delight for me. They let me know that mother nature is casting aside the thick blanket of winter slumber and preparing to burst forth in the glorious array of her youth. Oh, to be sure, I enjoy the beauty of winter as well. But it is a quiet beauty of muffled sounds and monochromatic landscapes. It is a time to rest the mind along with the ear and the eye. The earth will have gained strength during this rest, and the reward will be the bright blushes and soft sprouts of spring renewal. Life and color will return to the world, and a flurry of activity will accompany it.

But here in CA, that winter pause does not come. Fall and winter spell the return of life-giving rains to the parched land of the Valley. The green of the trees never fades, but it wearies and darkens during the long, hot summer months and is quickened to new boldness with the arrival of autumn. In winter, even the sidewalks wear robes of emerald.

Consequently, the emergence of theses harbingers of spring in my garden, these former sources of such joy, now signals something else to me.

The fog clung to my mustache and beard as I walked to work this morning. Cold and unpleasant, it, too, contained the unmistakably earthy aroma of spring. This same moisture accumulates slowly on the leaves of trees and the branches of shrubs until it plummets suddenly to pockmark the ground around their trunks like a tiny, wet meteor shower. The already damp soil greedily drinks up the offerings as if it is all too aware that the drought will come too soon.