April 17, 2023, 48.498337°, -114.437207°
The ground has been spring cleaned; rain freshened from the flattening.
Green springs up from rosettes past, edges still snow-stung and browned.
Arisen: Arnica leaves open to each other and hugging, Bluebell leaves
rotund and upright in an eager bunch, Skunk Cabbage sun-yellow
spadix and spathe; green Strawberry leaflets unfolding as an accordion,
Yarrow’s feathered-cut leaves radiating out like a Fibonacci spiral. Subtler
still is Huckleberry who just breached crimson budscales, and above the
early spring scene waves Usnea and Bryoria, who all the while have waited
for someone to stir, as there had not been much to watch below, with all
that monochrome cover as hovers winter. Across the path, Larch needles
caught mid-splendor by the final wind scour create a Sphagnum-like
landing and each step stands to sink or bounce. Old Larches bulge with
boles and hold vast Lichen interminglings enmeshed into proximity by an
intimate limited surface, a choice furrow or bark bench. There the Cladonia
clusters intermittent with moss, with grey-green podetia proud like a
forest. Swift Creek braids meltwater-brown below the steep banks of Dogwood
and fills the air with the scurry of matters’ aquatic motion. A dark shape
moves in the brown-blue roil and swims upstream. When they reach
the jam of sticks, they porpoise and a club-shaped tail turns last
into the water, a Beaver. Sand Hill Cranes croon rain rattle coiling,
hard to hear above the liquid susurrus. Pipsissewa is still prone, but each
leaf looks eager to tease gravity and gain skyward. Orthilia secunda
summons a wintergreen flavor, but not theirs, one of a Pyrola from afar,
north and east across the continent. It smells like wet Lichen, like tangles
of Bryoria epiphytic on Larch. Usnea draws the air with spores. Time is a
factor of birdsong and precipitation, and the variables are innumerable
and erratic. Hypogymnia’s gray thalli grace the forest floor. If I took you
with me, we would both be each of these words and none of them. What is
so, is this spring, and the sprungness pierces us green like Sword Fern
and turns us into a river-scoured pebble, turned over and over like the River in
green sentient minds, chloroplasts gleaning light to part water in order to
free electrons then ferried into everything fraught with life, as in om.
REBECCA DURHAM is an American poet, botanist, and visual artist. Read more.