March is marching forward! February flew by in a blink and we’re already a week into this new month. I’m loving the warmer days scattered between the colder ones as spring breaks through winter. There is evidence of new life everywhere and the trees bursting into bloom, the buds forming and the first flowers popping up. I went to Kings Mountain State Park a couple of weeks ago and spotted my first blooming trout lily, its delicate petals folded back like origami and the spotted green leaves reminding me of trout swimming upstream. The ground was littered with them, gleaming in delicate ovals among last fall’s leaves, a hopeful little beacon of yellow and red and green. A few years ago I didn’t know they existed and now I look forward to them as one of the first signs of spring. This time of year is so exciting and I always have a list of native plants I look out for, including the snowy white blood root, trillium, hepatica, trailing arbutus and more.
I feel like a kid again on a treasure hunt.
I’ve heard that if we return to the passions and pursuits of our childhood, we find our purpose.
I’m still figuring that out, but I do know not much has changed since I was a youngster and could be found in one of two places : absorbed in a book or wandering our three acres in Alberta looking at plants, digging for salamanders in gopher hills (turns out they love that moist, dark, rich Canadian soil churned up by rodents) or raising a baby bird until it’s ready to fly on its own. I spent hours in our driveway going through the gravel looking for – and finding – fossils, entranced every time I found a delicate imprint of shell in a rock. I kept my treasures in a yellow Sesame Street lunchbox. I had interesting rocks, fossils, a perfectly shaped hawk skull, a marvelous piece of petrified wood I found one day while walking across the farmer’s field behind our house and other interesting things that caught my eye. I also spent hours in my treehouse, patiently enticing chipmunks and squirrels to eat sunflower seeds out of my hand. I remember once climbing up into the branches of the huge poplar tree that held up the tree house and feeling it sway in the wind, the ground so far below I felt a little dizzy.
As a child, it wasn’t a conscious decision to do these things, I just did them because I loved them. I was often perfectly content to roam alone. People are complicated, nature is not. Some days I’d spend an afternoon following an ant across the yard to see where it was going. These days I have to carefully plan out my nature forays, slipping them in brief pockets of time when I’m not needed by work, responsibilities or family. I keep trying to figure out what my next step will be, what I want to do with life as my daughter gets older and starts to build her own life. I want to learn and travel and find plants, but I’m not sure how to do those things or how to make it sustainable. I feel this urgency to take action now, do things while I can and while I still have the ability. I’ll turn 42 this year and I realize that more time is never promised. I know this so well.
In the never ending daily routine, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this is all finite and we don’t get do-overs. At least, not that I’m aware of. I always get a little restless with the changing of the seasons, but at this phase of my life, it’s more acute. Take action now, be rebellious, break out of the rut, and grab hold of what truly inspires you.
Over the past few years, I’ve been on some truly fun forays into nature, usually trying to complete a mission sent to me by my botanist friend, Bill Moye, who lives in NYC. I often fail, but I always learn something and when I do succeed it is especially sweet.
One time I went with a friend to find this plant called the Death Camas. It grows above the banks of the river in a very particular location, draped over the water and when it’s in bloom, it is dazzling. Tiny white flowers exploding like sparklers. My friend and I waded up a creek, through quicksand, and in the cold river water, almost up to my upper thighs at times, but when I spotted this plant, I felt this elation that will stick with me for life. The work it took to find it made it that much more rewarding. These days I often find myself in the woods, whispering the scientific names like a witches spell. Hexalectris spicata! Monotropis odorata! I feel like Harry Potter. I often go off trail to look at something, crouching over the ground, talking to myself until another hiker comes by and I realize how weird I must look. There’s just so many interesting things to see and learn out in the world, and with the current state of affairs, I feel like our planet is increasingly at risk to lose everything that is pure and beautiful. I want to learn and see and protect.
I could ramble on, I’m sitting writing and sipping a little champagne at the Wine Collective in Shelby, but I’ll stop here and bid you adieu. Maybe the next time I post I’ll have figured out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. Doubtful, since I mostly wing everything, but possible.
Happy March!
