The weather has warmed this week teasing us with spring. Our experience tells us that we could have several more bouts of snow, maybe into May. Today the sun was bright, the sky pure blue, the tiny crocuses poking purple among the brown twigs and dry ground cover. The crab apple trees have barely perceptible buds here in Boulder in contrast to my friends’ photographs of colorful yellow and pink trees in full bloom in California.
I walked along Boulder Creek Trail, watching the huge noisy road graders re-arrange the boulders and fallen logs in the creek, preparing for snow’s run-off in another month or two. The ice has melted. The ducks, even a few ducklings, backstroke quickly in the eddies to the safety of quiet pools. The aspen are not yet ready to leaf, their stark white and cream bark outlined against the cerulean sky. The rock outcroppings along the trail beckon climbers, their shapes and cracks and shadows more distinct than they’ll be in another month or two, without the profusion of wildflowers to hide their slopes.
Birds are beginning to inhabit our backyard, chirping in unison, pecking at the richly flavored seeds in the bird feeder, standing on the edge of the fountain drinking water. Soon we’ll have bees and butterflies flitting here and there, once the bulbs shoot up from the cover of their large, curled leaves and the sweet-smelling vines return to life.
This in-between stage entices me to the out-of-doors, to new trails (although some are still covered with ice or deep mud on the north sides of the mountains), to working the dirt of our yard, excited to discover what lies beneath the dry grasses and wintered shrubs, and to lift my arms in glory to the rebirth around us.