Sprung

Lower MacLeay trail, 10:00 a.m.

Everything has sprung.

The trail is no longer open and bare, but surrounded on both sides by salmonberries that seem to have sprung up overnight, now so tall that they begin to arch overhead, holding the trail almost as an embrace, cozy. The stream banks are sheltered from view by the small thicket of shrubs that has filled in, and the hillside is a riot of shapes and shades of green, yellow, brown. Green, so green. Who knew there could be so many shades of green?

I have a fleeting moment of hesitancy, thinking I must have gotten on the wrong trail somehow. No, I remind myself, there is only one trail, and you have walked it all winter. It is the same trail, but now it is springtime, and things are wonderfully, magically changed. And indeed, as I look, I recognize those stones, roots, logs, pools - familiar, but bathed in a new shade of spring.

A plump red robin hops skittishly from branch to branch just ahead of me, not quite afraid, clutching a bit of moss and a fat spring worm in his beak. A dainty Douglas squirrel, much less pretentious than its larger, invasive Northern Grey cousin, pauses in its climb up a gnarled root to cock its head curiously at me.

Even the stones in the path glisten, moist from the light rain that is falling, drips displacing the delicate leaves of the fringecup and the duck’s foot plant so that it looks as though there must be a herd of tiny animals moving about underneath them.

My eyes are wide, my head moving from stream to hillside, ground to sky, soaking up the new-yet-familiar beauty of springtime sounds and senses. I can’t suppress the child-like wonder and awe and delight I feel, nor do I want to – I let the smile play freely across my face, shining on everything I see.

Only the trilliums are fading, their petals crumbling from stark white to pink to deep magenta, until finally they shrivel and fall to the ground, signaling the end of the beginning of spring.