I’ve taken the liberty of using for my title today, the words written at the top of a clipping sent to me last spring. Having for years taken on the sporadic effort of being my muse, my best friend brought the “little article” across the Atlantic to Halifax, whence it meandered across the country, and has lain dormant awaiting the B.C. spring.
This little inspiration was birthed in the London Times in a column called ‘Wild Notebook’ by Simon Barnes, who himself found some inspiration in his favorite 10th century Japanese author. That author had a penchant for making lists, and Barnes proceeded to use her modus operandi to list his own private joys of spring.
With spring 2011 being the sluggard it is, I’ve decided to include a few hopes along with the joys in my own list.
Right at the top I have to include the hope that having arrived, spring will remember its manners and act somewhat spring-like. You know … sun, warmth, balmy breezes, drying/warming soil.
This past week I’ve had exactly two days when schedule and weather conspired to let me work outside, and even then, I went out in the sunshine and came in, in the rain.
Still hoping … that enough of this year’s smaller than usual little herring, that staple of our Salish Sea, escaped the nets to become some future year’s bigger herring. Perhaps this spring’s stormy seas were conspiring to give them a fin-up.
I hope, too, that those of us blessed with living on this variable coast, will find it in our hearts to adjust our seaside activities for just a couple of months to allow the Brant first and exclusive dibs at our beaches. If you’d been hiking almost non-stop for thousands of miles, wouldn’t you enjoy an undisturbed rest and the nourishment to carry on and keep the species going?
Other seasons surely have their special joys, but for sheer exuberance, renewal and faith in the workings of the planet, spring is hard to beat. When I walk out to the mailbox to send the morning’s scribblings on their way, the perfume of spring is everywhere — I always believe it’s the smell of things growing, opening, reaching for the sun. It says, “Hurry and have breakfast so you can get outside!”
Without even stepping out the door, I know that others are feeling the same way. Every year, the Northern Flicker’s machine gun tattoo on my metal chimney puts my heart beat into orbit till I realize it’s a lovelorn bird up there full of life’s seasonal creation.
She doesn’t know it, but Blueberry, the Schnauzer, contributes to my joys of spring as well. After a good brushing, the groomings of her fine, silvery hair are put outside on a branch or shrub. Invariably, the hair’s snatched up to furnish an avian nursery and the chores of spring and summer bird-raising are mine for the watching.
One heart-bursting joy of spring I enjoy for nearly a month even while glued to my computer chair. Just a slight glance away from the screen while I dredge up another word, over there in a direct line to the right, perfectly framed in the extreme left panel of the garden window, is B.C. coastal spring personified. It’s Ribes sanguineum, the wild, red-flowering currant, dripping its crimson blooms against a grey fence.
And this week I saw my first, tentative, skunk cabbage. Was there ever a more stalwart, golden harbinger of spring in the wetlands? Three years ago I dug up and replanted three young specimens in a soggy, shaded tub outside the window over the sink. Will this be the year they recover enough to bloom? An artist friend likes to call them ‘swamp candles’ which I think is a much more glowing name for the light they spread.
And here’s a thank you to that writer somewhere in England, who sees “ … little shards of fluttering color … a white butterfly that has dipped his wings in marmalade.”
— Nancy Whelan is a local columnist. She lives in Qualicum Beach.