March

This is the swelling time of year.

Streams and rivers turgid with spring rain and melting snow breaking their banks, flooding half-thawed ground. In sunny clearings, soft soil harbors seeds deep within. Buds plump with flowers and leaves. Sap rising up through thick trunks, seeping sweet. Ewes with round bellies, ready to lamb. Birds puffed in courting and, on these early March days, protection against the damp cold.

People talk of “swelling with pride,” and perhaps the whole world does this in spring. After all, we survived, didn’t we?

A messy time of year, too, even deep in the woods we consider pure. Not the grey snow and slush of cities or even of country roadsides, but the forest floor littered with needles and leaves and branches and churned-up soil, a winter's accumulation.

The woods ripe with the scent of itself – pine, hemlock, rotting leaves, wet bark, moist earth.