Unstoppable

The great thaw is on here in New England. Bit by bit the lawns and gardens have been resurfacing this week after a long slumber under a cold, deep blanket of white. We'd almost forgotten them under there. There is very much the sense of this all returning from the dead, and I tell you: it is so good to see the earth again.

Once it starts, it can seem the great reveal happens all at once. It was only a week ago that the first bits of garden and grass were beginning to show. I know this because it was just last Friday, when I stepped out to feed my vacationing neighbor's cats, that I noticed green in my garden where there had been snow...surely just the day before. It was the beginnings of daffodils, growing in serpentine fashion, oddly, alongside the ragged edge of a shrinking snowbank. Daff's don't grow like this naturally. They were curvy because they'd had to grow around something. That something was a hard crust of ice and snow. I realized this at first glance, and it made me smile.

It's marvelous to me to think of those bulbs under inches of earth (and snow!) getting the signal--sensing the subtlest shift in light, sun growing slightly nearer every day--of those leaves beginning their climb through the soil and then above it, then stopping for nothing once they've started. What power, I thought. What insistence. It lifted my heart to see them. Here was spring in no uncertain terms barreling toward us.

I knew I had to try to capture this sweetness. And I knew that even in the time it would take to get my camera, the scene would change. The light would have shifted from what felt like spotlight position, the leaves would have begun, continued their stretching toward the sky, straightening their bent little backs in the process. Still, I figured if I had any chance, it had to be now, not after the cat sit. So I went for it.

I love that photography calls--well...that Nature calls me. I don't think I will ever tire of the imperative inherent in this endeavor. And for what am I answering, hopefully capturing? For sharing the wise voice of the earth, that her whispers may reach far beyond the singular curl of my ear.