Tomorrow is May Day. And here in Minnesota it doesn’t look like any May Day I remember. We are still in
A Long Slow Stroll into Spring
here.
Yesterday I took a walk at French Regional Park. There were lots of families enjoying the day at the park. On my walk I searched for signs of spring and though there were some greens starting to appear it was still a pretty stark landscape.
Still, I found beauty in the starkness.
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
— Rachel Carson, The Silent Spring
It felt good to stride along the path through the trees and along the marsh. The Minnesota Orienteering Club had set up a course and many families picked up their directions sheet, clocked in at the beginning of the course, and then hurried to see how quickly they could find all of the markers on the course. (At least that’s my interpretation of what I saw.) It was fun to see kids and parents working together to discover the different markers. I loved to see families outdoors together hiking among the trees.
I strolled with much less purpose than the orienteering folks, simply enjoying being in the woods and spotting signs of emerging life. As I walked I payed attention to the trees, many of them towering overhead, with thick patterned bark, others with smooth white bark, all of them reaching towards the sky.
Concerning trees and leaves… there’s a real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on a granite slab and start to swell, bud and flower. Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day. A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn’t make one. A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, but secretly it seethes, it splits, sucks and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out in a green, fringed fling. No person taps this free power; the dynamo in the tulip tree pumps out even more tulip tree, and it runs on rain and air.”
―
Walking among the trees is food for my soul, one of my doorways to awe and wonder. What places or activities feed your soul and open you to awe and wonder?
Wishing you a beautiful week and warmth. I’m hoping to see spring speed up this first week of May.
May you walk in beauty.
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