In the Land of Waiting-for-Spring

A tulip-in-waiting.

Pasque flowers await Queen bees, yet to emerge.

In this season of waiting, in a time that can feel like the unraveling of the world, what gives life joy and meaning? What are the signs of hope that lift us up?

Wild ones always spark that joy.

Last week, at the base of this oak hill by the river, a flash of soft yellow caught my eye. An inquisitive little goldfinch watched me from her perch with bright eyes. As I spoke to her in my most bird-beguiling tones, she fluttered to a near branch, and then to a nearer to listen for a moment.

Another day, high overhead I saw a migrating kettle of hawks and watched, mesmerized, as they swirled and spiraled on a thermal, a column of warm, ascending air. An ancient, circling dance of black wings against blue sky.

Earlier, on an evening when telescopes were set up to view the stars, I witnessed a breathtaking sight: a flock of night-migrating swans. 

Out of nowhere they swept into view. They wheeled and undulated like a murmuration of starlings, then winged away west, a dazzling oneness of movement and purpose — crossing the continent to a destination only they knew. 

Never before have I witnessed the great movement of spring migration across North America at this scale, as it was happening. I was speechless with wonder, reverence. The swans' surety, their way of knowing what to do, where to go, when to go there...all of the many mysteries swans know of that humans do not; not least of all, how to get from here to there, using senses humans will never know. 

How amazing to see these white-feathered beings flying as one in all their power and striving, and in accord with their internal knowledge — inhabiting their full, embodied, necessary lives — in their rightful place in the great web of being. 

This is magic. This is the spell of the wild. Touched by the ineffable; the swans' sacred nature revealed to me, their utter belonging to the ancient cycles of the wheel of the year, and to the community of earth and sky. 

I felt I had touched the vital source. For one singing moment, I felt part of the vast sweep of life on earth, this beautiful earth I love so much. 

Beltaine blessings as the rain falls from this Land of Waiting-for-Spring. 

The green fuse

Now comes Bealtaine, following close on the heels of the snows.

Now comes the great flush of life unleashed from long months bound deep in ice: muskrat pouring through fresh-thawed waters, common loon and  trumpeter swan riding south winds to boreal lakes, the rise of the yellow warbler calling sweet, sweet, I'm so sweet. 

Mallard pair feeding side by side in the water meadow along the creek. Great Horned Owls roost in a tall willow, guarding their adolescent owlet, still tawny fuzz. Raccoon in twilight flowing up the stucco of neighbor's garage and in through the opening in the window frame, where she may be raising kits.

Everything swishing, splashing, rushing, shaking off the shackles of winter and hurrying to claim breeding territory, find food, arrange the world more to their liking.

Warm winds, changeable cloud stretched in streamers. Soft gray fur of the pussy willow. Whistle of the cardinal, the last full moon of April shedding her radiance on the mortal world like the Queen of the May.

New buds held tight, pointed green origamis bobbing tenderly in the wind. Browns of winter threaded with small green, a salad of golden caterpillar catkins, crisp willow leaves, soft moss and rolled, purple-green spears of bloodroot.

Following the travels of a pilgrim walking the Old Way to Canterbury, who ended his pilgrimage at dawn today by the edge of the sea. A stained glass journey in song, words and dreamlike images of the countryside, its sacred wells. Waymarkers, holloways, spirals of shell-fans with bone china ridges. A book of holy days, with the tale ending (or beginning?) on the great pagan fire festival as the rising tide of life is renewed, remade, released into the wild air to reanimate the earth.

I kindle no hilltop fire today but in my heart. I smell no blossom but in memory. Yet I light a candle for the holy day.

This morning's rain clouds shall pass as warmer air blows in from the south this afternoon. What I will pack for a ramble to observe this day: the lovely book I'm reading, notebook and pen for nature jottings, the last of the trail mix. And a reverence for spring, whose red-winged blackbirds float over waterlands, calls ringing through the cattails as they claim each moment of this fast-slipping life for their own.

Bealtaine

Leaping fire on the hill

How I want to bound and burn like you, like every wild thing:

Rabbit, deer, horse, fox

The green spirit.

Leaping fish in the lake

How I want to bathe in that clear cold water

Revive my withered spirit 

Let go the pains I hold onto

Be baptized with joy

Be the joy to which the rushing waters give birth

and give birth to a river of joy

Dive into the depths of creation

without fear

Flash through the shallows, 

Swim hard upstream

Leaping forth every spring for an eon

Transform shape

wear down rock

Sublimate into mists and vapors 

then rain to earth in the Great Circle

as water begets more water and more life.

Leaping bird from branch

Wings dancing with sky

Tattoo over my heart, 

Forever winging into happiness

Bluebirds mean happiness

Every bird is like May

Bright, quick, throbbing with life

Singing gladly, wings outstretched

Carrying our wishes on their backs,

Our hopes in their feathers, 

Our dreams in their songs.

Leaping green from earth

How I long to rise like the plant people

A root, a seed

Ever-renewed, springing from the cracks

Useful, lusty, persistent and full of gifts

The bloom like the May, buzzing with bees

Green (the faerie color)

Hawthorn (the faerie tree)

May: The color of the dream world, the Otherworld as it calls, 

Stretches out flowering tendrils, 

Beckons with ever-young fingers to mortal kind

The greenling spirit of the earth reborn

And oh, little lover of fairytales and spring,

How the sap surges still 

in this young-old heart.

O, the merrye greengrass

How magical it would be to come across a Jack-in-the-Green or Morris Dancers in London today, on Beltane!

I'm told those very, very old traditions are celebrated in some towns, but not really in London anymore. (This despite the fact that a whole area of London is named after the Mayfair it hosted each year, until the well-to-do got fed up with the riff raff and sent the May Fair packing.)

All the same, by whatever name he is called, the Greenman strides in his leafy cloak down London's streets and across its squares and parklands, heath, hill and vale, lighting each tree with green fire...coaxing the fat candles of magnolia trees into pale flame, whispering the songs of growing to every tender blade of grass, each leaf, each heart.

Today, I left the city for the Heath, where I heard the sound of nothing but the wind and birds calling as they winged overhead.

Even through the soles of my shoes, I felt the blessed moisture of the grass, the soft give of the turf, so cool and sweetly scented. I walked over tussocks of grass growing in whorls and cowlicks, rippling in the wind, following its own wild order.

Atop Kite Hill, hair swirling in the wind, I may have thought myself Catherine Earnshaw on Wuthering Heights for a moment...the passionate girl who drank in the air of the heights and smells of the heather like nourishment. Heather...heathen...hmm.

Then I descended into rolling hills of woodland, trickles of tiny streams, and snags...the homes of owls, rabbits, foxes, and hedgehogs, ducks and crows and inquisitive Blue Tits.

I relearned what I'd forgotten—that gorse flowers smell deliciously of coconut—and learned what I've not known until now: the delicate vanilla scent of one tiny blue bell.

And at the end of it all, my left knee burned from stinging nettle, my eyes itched from tree pollen, and I smelled like a cotton sheet hung to dry in the wind and sun. Glorious.

I leave you with the words of the Bard. Blessed May to all.

Under the greenwood tree 

Who loves to lie with me,

And turn his merry note 

Unto the sweet bird's throat, 

Come hither, come hither, come hither!

Here shall he see

No enemy 

But winter and rough weather.

—As You Like It