Spring is Here
if you know where to look
Some of these patches persisted all winter, even during the snowiest times, in places where liquid water flowed on the warmest of days. Now they are growing. I imagine that the forest creatures are as glad for them as I am--or maybe more glad, since they provide water, I'm sure, for deer and fox and such.
I am always glad to see the evidence of flowing water. Last month I posted a picture of our spring house nearly buried in snow. The snow is mostly still with us, but there is a clear stream-bed running downhill from the spring-house now. The progress of a month is evident in the percentage of brown and green showing in this photograph. In another month, there will only be little piles of snow and the forest will sport its new green leaves and early forest flowers.
These small signs of spring turn my mind in the direction of windowsill seedlings, garden improvements, and that expansiveness only experienced when the temperature outside stays above freezing for weeks at a time. Even though my field is still covered in snow more than three feet deep, I am planning for summer.
The trees are planning too. For years I've been enamored of the looks of the Moose Maple as it prepares for a summer's profusion of large soft leaves. That particular shade of red and the smooth arc of diametrically opposed twigs decorated with fecund dagger-shaped buds and precise scribes always makes me stop to look deeply.
Then there are the beech trees. Hanging on to the parchment of last summer's leaves, they wrap their new spring green in tight golden spears. The cold spring breeze ruffles their paper-thin old leaves to make the most gentle sound. What better example do we need of enjoying the present while still preparing for the future without worry? I can't imagine the beech trees in their profusion worrying about what is to come at all. I can imagine them looking forward to the color combinations possible when the gold spears open up to the green-laced-with-red wet leaves, giving way to the clearest green of all, followed by the most valuable gold in the forest. Ubiquitous, but lovely, beech trees have much to teach us.
I am studying their lessons as I prepare for the next month's Music as Meditation. April 7th brings another opportunity to share my music with listeners in the quiet of the sanctuary at Christ Episcopal Church. I'll be playing one of Edvard Grieg's lyric pieces called "To Spring" and showing off a perky little polka-etude for piano.
Cecile Chaminade gave us an Elegie that I'll play to honor those trees long gone from the realm of the living, but still feeding the forest around them. I'll share some ideas for a new set of etudes in each major key and some themes from a string trio I completed in the past month.
It has not only been the forest reminding me of my connection to other beings this month. I experienced the fun of sending out one of my recent compositions to violinists I know. Three of these lovely people wrote back to thank me for the trio and to assure me that they would share it. Already 20 people have downloaded it from the International Music Score Library Project.
That success tapping into the web of us all, along with those trees preparing for the right moment to bring the world their leaves, leave me with a kind of optimism too rooted in reality to shake. I look forward to sharing it with listeners on Sunday, April 7 at 5 PM at Christ Episcopal Church in North Conway, NH.
