Fingers Crossed

We don’t often get days in mid-March when the earth stokes us with warm heat, but that’s what we got Sunday, and today too.  Yesterday, it was warm enough to sit outside without a jacket, without a fleece even, to gaze at the garden still littered with the remnants of last year’s leaves.  This morning, my daughter, an hour-and-a-half north, texted to let me know she was wearing flip-flops.  In March?  Unheard of.

Already there is evidence of spring—the wrinkled foxglove leaves where they’ve seeded themselves— green rags flopping between crevices in the rocks at the back of the garden.  

 

 In the side yard, blooming snowdrops mound in the grass.  Out front, purple crocuses help to hide the cement foundation under the brick porch.

We cracked the window before we went to bed last night, and woke in pre-dawn light to the soft swish of cars driving down the highway a half-mile away, and the wirt-wirt, peeb-beat of birds—sounds that come to us fresh and new each April, but this year have arrived weeks earlier.

In New England, the only thing we know to trust is the unexpected.  No matter how good things are, someone will caution us to anticipate the worst.  A snow storm in April doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.  Rarely, but in my lifetime, we’ve had snow in mid-May.  Earlier this year, I cautioned myself not to celebrate this string of warm weather too much, sure if I did, I’d jinx things.  

But as I parked the car in front of the town common today, and gazed at a woman dressed in a short sleeve shirt, sitting in front of the reflections mirrored in Meetinghouse Pond, I decided, on a day like this, it’s just too darn hard not to.

Gifts of Stone

It’s been too long since my husband and I have walked in the woods behind the house.  So on a sunny, snow-free holiday noontime, before settling in front of the fire and football, we pulled on our heavy boots and hiked through rugged land, now dotted with hanging branches and broken trees, evidence of one hurricane and the many wind storms that have battered the land over the last years. 

When our daughter was young, she and her next-door cousins ran through trails back there, vaulting over ledges.  They settled into a fort they claimed under the brush by the wetlands and played on a plank balanced over sawed-off tree stumps.  Sunday, we stepped over rotting tree limbs, under branches held via tenuous strips of bark, beside trunks leaning at impossible angles.

Picking our way through the woods, we explored the uneven paths tumbling down to the swamp, then climbed up to the yard of around-the-corner-neighbors whose property provided the destination at the end of many hikes during our girl’s childhood—a country lot accommodating chickens and goats, a multi-tiered tree-house, and raspberry bushes from which they invited us to pick.  I can’t remember the last time we were there.

As we stepped onto their land on Sunday, I realized that sometime, when we weren’t paying attention, life altered directions.  As a result of that turn on the map, we missed something true and clear. Over the years  we’ve not been climbing through the back woods, our neighbors have been busy, clearing their property, creating adornments from the granite that sprouts from our earth as easily as any flower.

On their lot, towers of stones stand in careful compositions, each labeled with a specific designation.  Stepping from one to another we found “Serendipity,” “Perseverance,” and “Hope.”  Two small rock statues, marking the entrance to a path through thick myrtle have been dubbed “Love” and “Light.” Tucked into slight spaces we found “Power” and “Creator,” and “Fertility.”  Three statues situated on a slight ledge held no identification tags— in my mind I dubbed them “Protectors.”  

Wandering through their green velvet acre, we marveled at our good timing.  How meaningful to come across this treasure of composition and peace on the first day of a new year.  It was a captivating beginning, a moment of depth that grounded us in all that we need to value.  Circling the land, I opened myself to the strength of stone, to the message of balance and patience—and a new-found clarity that when life makes it challenging to maintain either,  “Contentment” and Understanding” are only a walk-through-the-woods away.