An aroma floats in on a soft breeze in these springtime hills and valleys we call home. We feel a surge of Appalachian Mountain Country nostalgia pulse through us as we become immersed in a deep and totally precious feeling.
It is a blending of the Spring warmth of this day mixed with the sweet air, the sunshine glow and the blue-eyed beauty of this year's many and varied violets.
The woodlands this precious springtime is scented with all the sweet
fragrances the world has ever known, brought here on the breath of the winds. They are the
memories of love songs that have been sung by the sweethearts of all ages past.
We close our eyes to absorb the rejuvenating beauty and wonder of the feeling and allow ourselves to realize they all add up to the touch, the vision and the intoxicating fragrance of the Mountain Azalea Princess (wild honeysuckle).
Sprinkled throughout the green background and spotlighted by shafts of sunlight are a multitude of wildflowers as varied in size and shape and color as only the divine artist can paint.
The lovely wild azalea bright-lights this woodland world with a soft pinkness as she delicately dances in delightful beauty across this season's stage exhaling into the air an aroma so intensely sweet, so captivating, it epitomizes all the best of fragrances of this wonderful world.
We are consumed with total appreciation, lost in the overwhelming sense of this woodland magic. Our fingertips hear the song of green, pink, yellow and blue. Our skin breathes the sweet aroma of the azalea's entrancing fragrance. We see and hear the wind's serenade of deep heart beauty, essence and love.
Copyright © 1988-2000 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published June 21, 1989 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.