Nature’s Promises Kept Again
Every year in the brown, sere days before the great greening in spring, I begin to have doubts. Will the flowers come again? Will the birds return? Will the trees leaf out? With all the despair and calamity rife in the world, the ancient fear that the end is near is as believable as ever.
Perhaps global warming will burn us up.
Oh no, it’s global cooling on the way. Watch out for glaciers.
No, no. The real fear is bombs and chemicals.
Not to worry. Disease outbreaks will get us before that.
Going into March I am gripped by a madness that has nothing to do with basketball. I am torn between despair over a political process descending into lunacy and an economic process that guarantees only an ever-growing poverty class. I am glad I do not know how to tie a rope into a noose.
Then I look out the window one morning and see the great miracle. Snowdrops are blooming by the house wall. I blink my eyes and shake my head. They are still there. In a few more days they are joined by winter aconites, merry yellow jewels against the melting snow. Slowly but surely all the spring wildflowers return— actually this unusually warm spring, they came fast and furiously— and I feel that great uprising of joy and hope once again. Nature does not renege on her promises. . . .
Gene explains the wonders of springtime and how they renew Nature's promise over on his blog.
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Gene Logsdon is the author of, most recently, A Sanctuary of Trees: Beech Nuts, Birdsongs, Baseball Bats, and Benedictions |
