Have you ever driven down the road on an early spring day just feeling some joy you can’t explain? Something inside is trying to burst forth, and holding it back is a chore. You sing with a song on the radio at the top of your lungs. The world around is full of warmth and coming alive!
Have you ever driven down the road on an early spring day just feeling some joy you can’t explain? Something inside is trying to burst forth, and holding it back is a chore. You sing with a song on the radio at the top of your lungs. The world around is full of warmth and coming alive! Buds on trees are popping with the pastel colors of spring. The grass is SOOOO green offsetting the subtle shades of whitish green to delicate red that decorate the trees in their spring wardrobe of swelled buds, flowers, and new leaves.
Every spring this happens to me. My body seems overcome with exhilaration for life! The height of this awe-inspiring view lasts only a few days, but that is precisely why it grabs my attention. I can’t get enough of it. I want my eyes to soak it in and fill my brain with memories to last every day of the year. Alas it passes, but not before it inspires and fills me with a thrill. New birth opens all around me and I get wrapped up in it. I want to take walks in it and sit and soak in the beauty.
And why not? Something inside me connects with this new pulse of life and picks up the song of spring along with the trees, other plants, and animals. I believe there is a Creator that made all this and allows us opportunity to enjoy it, as He unfolds it before our eyes. Bird voices bring the once quiet woods and fields of winter back to life. Turkeys gobble their mating calls. The ruffed grouse can be heard drumming his wings for a mate. Frogs are croaking. The smells of spring waft through the air.
It’s worth some time off to drive the countryside to a park or your woods and enjoy the big picture view of spring unfolding before you. Then walk the trails of the park or your woods and take it in closer up. See the shadbush blooming with the subtle shades of the different colored leaves opening up to the warmer days and bright sun. Sit on a sun-warmed rock and let those rays penetrate into your face and bare arms.
Shadbush (also called serviceberry) is one of the first shrubs to bloom in the spring and has brilliant white flowers. You can see a shadbush in the lower left of this photo.
Finally, look even closer up at what is responding to the warm forest floor to delight your senses.
Ferns Unfolding
Red Trillium
Hepatica
White Bleeding Heart
If at all possible, take the time to enjoy this brief period. You’ll be better off for it. I know I am.
