Spring is in the air. The breeze is gentle with the smell of birthing, the earth radiates freshness, the birds sing with more abandon than they have for months. The first wildflowers are in bloom in the deep forest: the hardy toothwort, the delicate purple shooting star. The tender green of new growth is everywhere.
     — Barbara Dean, Wellspring
 
It will take you half a lifetime to find the earliest flower. 
      —Journal entry, Henry David Thoreau, March 26, 1856, excerpted from Thoreau and the Art of Life

. . .

I walk the woods full of joy
Thinking back to seven years old
Tadpoles and redwing blackbirds
Rubber boots half full of water
Poling a half-submerged raft
In a marsh out behind my house 
A marsh full of birdsong.

New life fills these woods today
Even the wind feels fresh and new.
Somehow, in these woods,
I too feel full of new life 
Leaning back against 
A great old tree.

In Celebration of the Great Dance of Life.
     - Journal note.