The Signs We Do Not See

The revelations brought by brighter eyes

The spring of February is a tide on the shore; it washes its clear water over us and recedes, in and out and in again growing ever so slightly each time it crashes on the shore until it fully engulfs us on one fine day and the pattern gives way to a new constant.

A warm day, a cold day, a cold day, a cold day.

A warm day, a cold day, a cold day.

A warm day, a cold day.

A warm day, a warm day, a warm day, a warm day…

It is easy to be blind to the approaching spring, to forget the warm days that have already come and the warm days that will be. We have gained over an hour of daylight since the winter solstice and are a nearly a month away from the spring equinox. Despite this, the wind still rips, the cold still bites and others will mock and remind you of every flake of snow when you notice the subtly budding trees, the rapidly reddening osier dogwood, the birdsong that was not on the wind a week ago. Such is the way of life. If you are able to perceive the good, there will be those who remind you of the bad. Do not fault them too harshly; the cold winds of winter get in their lungs and escape in bitter sounds.

But you have tended your hearth and march on toward the woodline, through the white fields and gullies and you see. You see the alder bushes cautiously sprinkling a hint of pollen, flirting with the early bees. You see tracks through fields and deep in the forest, on the old logging roads the animals use for their nightly promenades. You see the wind rustle unneeded limbs and shells from trees, a cleansing flight of winter dust and dry leaf. You see too the wind blow the snow in drifts against fences and onto roads. It exposes the crusty ice beneath the blanket of snow torn off unceremoniously as if to shout “Awake you field, awake!” The wind issues its imperative but the field sleeps unshod waiting for the sun.

Perhaps you do not see these things. It is fine. You can walk with children or the mothers of children who do notice these things, the small important things, the forest’s and field’s equivalent of thimbles and buttons and bells. There are days I can only see the cold and the dwindling wood pile, the forecast, the many needed cold-wrought repairs. Those are the days my wife sees the new pine siskins in the field, the days my daughter sees the tiny tracks left by deer mice near the shed. Walk through a field or forest with a child in February and you will be shown a hundred signs of spring. They do not know what they do, but every little paw, every bud on every bush, every snow crystal reflecting every ray of light are revealed by them if we but listen and allow our cold adult anxieties to be burned away by their tiny bright woodstove hearts. A walk outdoors with a child is redemption manifest.