Spring Pruning
Why is it that moss seems greener in the rain? Why do certain ducks choose to stop in my personal wetland? Why does the familiar both nourish and stagnate at the same time?
I live in a beautiful place where others choose to visit—to bicycle and hike and ski, to spectate the subtleties of seasonal shift. The bare browns of winter barren will soon start to green up. Already in my gardens are sprouts yawning into a warmer sun. The dormancy has passed and the new beginnings beckon. I clean the blanketed leaves from around the mosses and daffodils, the lilies and iris. I remove downed branches and cut back wilted leaves. The pruning allows these plants to breathe.
These cycles, having had interruption last year while on the road, continue on their New England course, patches of ice mostly melted away now. I watch the growth spurts of daffodils and rhubarb, the first bravery bold in gesture. I feel the pull for personal pruning still, the one year's worth of footsteps only brought me so far. It is while in the fullness of the bloom, not just in the pregnant bud, that I see clearly the dead canes needing to be removed.
I joined a writing Meet Up group this winter to see how my year on the road wants to be remembered. I've started to extract the texts, the memories, and the people off of the blog pages to breathe pruned afterlife into them. I tease them out into this seasonal shift, new spring energy infused. Gestures germinate. Characters develop out of the serendipity of paths crossed, intersections of points unknown.
Is every flash of bravery bold as it strikes the path, a point in time? Are we all bravely bold...or boldly brave? To walk knowingly into the unknown asks for bravery...and boldness. Pruning always. The sprout opening fully to receive the nourishment. And once the cycle is complete, the head needs to be lopped off. Pruned.
Is every flash of bravery bold as it strikes the path, a point in time? Are we all bravely bold...or boldly brave? To walk knowingly into the unknown asks for bravery...and boldness. Pruning always. The sprout opening fully to receive the nourishment. And once the cycle is complete, the head needs to be lopped off. Pruned.
"I want to know more about RB," one of the Meet Up members feeds back to me after I read text from my post on San Antonio.
"It's the people that mostly offer one experience over another," I think. "They are the real story here."
I went to San Antonio to see the Missions....you know, the Alamo, the Rose Window. But, I spent time with my Couchsurfing host RB as well. I experienced, in part, "his" San Antonio, and because I was there, he got to experience his San Antonio through me, too. And so I will spend time with RB again, to extract from memory the pieces of him that now reside in me, and to speculate on what I may have left behind. This is pruning too, this extraction of essence—essence of each person I met at intersections of paths unknown, and essence of what in me has been pruned.
"It's the people that mostly offer one experience over another," I think. "They are the real story here."
I went to San Antonio to see the Missions....you know, the Alamo, the Rose Window. But, I spent time with my Couchsurfing host RB as well. I experienced, in part, "his" San Antonio, and because I was there, he got to experience his San Antonio through me, too. And so I will spend time with RB again, to extract from memory the pieces of him that now reside in me, and to speculate on what I may have left behind. This is pruning too, this extraction of essence—essence of each person I met at intersections of paths unknown, and essence of what in me has been pruned.
In my mind, I have chosen a date, not yet announced. I have not been fully pruned even if I continue to prune. The road wants more of me. I lean now in that direction, a road both unfamiliar and familiar. Otherwise, the stagnation will settle and crush the moss so green in the rain, moss that wants to drink in the moist, the emotion, the nourishment. The ducks know the score. They stop in a wetland pond that is familiar along their route, and it nourishes for the time they are here, but it is not their stopping place. They will feed from it and move on. I remember that feeling and long to return to the fullness of my bloom, and the boldness of my bravery.....on the road.
The tender new-green
Adorns the naked branches of
Last winter’s sleep
Adorns the naked branches of
Last winter’s sleep