Mountain Country's change from Winter into Spring is much less dramatic than usual this year. It is just as inevitable, none-the-less, and equally anticipated.
Spring's perennial promise is to be seen on the crowns of the hardwood trees. When viewed from a distance the slopes of the ridges are sponge-painted with the blush and flush of soft pink and chartreuse green. Sugar maple, poplar and birch are previewing the flaming foliage of autumn as they ready themselves for the spring green of May time.
Weeping willows are drooping their slick
and slender branches like teardrops caught in the act of dripping from the sleepy eyelids
of winter's slumber. On the shoulders of the ridges, white birch trees glow brightly in
the sunlight.
A close look at the very tip of sugar maple twigs demonstrates the promise of new life about to become a reality. Leaf buds are pulsating with a quiet excitement to unfold themselves into virile, living green. To smell, to listen and to touch is to experience the orchestral warm-up that will explode all over and throughout these ever-loving valleys and everlasting hills in the weeks ahead.
In the early mornings, the Earth can be caught exhaling the excesses of its waters of winter as mists fill the valleys. It caresses the mountains in loving embrace. It is the breath of life that will give birth to that which lies smoldering in the humus of the forest floor.
It is fitting, indeed, that this land is our Mother the Earth and we its children. We are intimate family in need of mutual loving and caring for the well being of all; our protection and preservation and our perpetuation. And therein is the mystery and the magic and the miracle of life and living in Mountain County Earth.
Copyright © 1988-2000 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published March 29, 1989 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.