Spring Is the Time

Spring is the season of new life. You can see it everywhere, if you slow down — in the hardhack (Spiraea douglasii) bursting open along the water, pink and soft against the green.

And you can see it in the smallest creatures, twice over — because spring is also the time of waiting: of young ones looking up, trusting a parent to come back with food.

A baby Anna’s hummingbird, no bigger than a thumb, watching the sky.

A baby red-breasted nuthatch, just as small, just as certain, waiting for its meal.

Two different species. The same wait. The same quiet trust that the one who loves you will come back. It’s the most universal thing in the world — and you find it in the smallest of creatures, if you’re still enough to see it.

And across the water, the great one — a great egret, all white, softening into a blue haze. Tall and grown and grand — and once, not so long ago, a small thing looking up, waiting for a parent too.

And once more today, the great egret returned to the water — the same patient grace, the same season of plenty.

You wait. You breathe. You don’t move. I’ve come to believe they can sense it when you come to witness and not to take. They let me stay — and showed me what spring is really about.