New things

Spring has sprung, and there are new things all over the place around here.  Last Wednesday, Tilly and I went for a walk at one of our local spots.  It's not a huge wilderness; in fact, it's what I might call an urban wilderness, if I lived in the urbs.  But I live in the 'burbs, and maybe I should therefore call it a 'burban wilderness?

You can see there on the horizon - houses.  And there are power lines, and more houses.  But it's a place with its own wholeness, its own integrity.  I have seen blue herons there, and coyotes, and there's a kestrel pair every spring, and I even saw a black-faced weasel there once. 

It has a hill to climb (from which I can see the ocean).

And a body of water to attract coots and ducks and herons.  (I hesitate to call it a lake - because to anyone outside California, it is not - but it feels a bit big to call it a pond in California, even though if I were from Michigan, I'm pretty sure it would be a pond.)

But most importantly, it changes with the changing of the seasons.  And I can get my feet on the dirt, and see those little intimate changes that mean that the year is turning.

Those are purple wild sweet peas there, with the lemonade berries, a mixing of winter and spring that makes me happy.  The monkeyflowers are out, too.

And the willows are starting to leaf out.

I love going on this walk, week after week, year after year, watching the small changes.  It reminds me of some of the essays in The Wild Places, one of the most beautiful books I've ever read (and I say that as a person who doesn't like beautiful books just because the writer can turn a phrase; they also need to say something).  Macfarlane goes looking for the untouched places of Britain, only to find that the most remote places he can get to show the unmistakable marks of the millenia of human habitation of that small island (which in itself I find awesome - in the original meaning of the word); but instead of despairing of ever finding his wild places, he instead describes in loving terms that feeling of deep connection that comes from having one's own small place to be in, season in and season out, as the years turn, whether it's a backcountry preserve, or something like my small 'burban wilderness.

As I walk, I find myself composing little internal paeans to what I could perhaps call grace (I will not subject you to them, I promise); little hymns to that feeling of weighty warmth that is thankfulness - not the weight of burden, but the weight of a supportive hand on the shoulder, or a heavy comforter on a cold night.  And last Wednesday, my little internal songs of praise were for the durability of fragile things.  They go, but they do come back - they really do.

And sometimes they come back brand-new.  Like this little fragile thing - long may she endure.

Isn't she stunning?  I haven't met her yet, but she's our cousin's new baby, and I bet she, too, is a weighty warmth in her parents' arms.  I knitted her a blanket (which is really a much prettier dusty rose color than it looks here, I promise):

But all of those stitches, even the 1200-stitch cast-off row (it had to have ruffles, didn't it?)

can't even come close to encompassing the love I feel for that little girl and her parents and big brother.

I tried, though - in that way that knitters do.  And I even finished it (more or less) in time (I knitted madly for seven days) to be waiting for her at home when she got back from the hospital (thank goodness she was willing to be a little late)(even though I'm pretty darned sure - speaking from experience - that her mother wasn't feeling thankful for her lateness at all, at all - that's a whole different kind of weightiness! and waityness, come to think of it).

I'm a day or so early, but I guess this is all by way of saying, Happy Equinox, everyone - spring is here at last.