Warmer today, but the weather is already changing. The forecast predicts rain for tomorrow — the cold variety, more a part of winter than summer. Spring at Red Willow is truly a threshold season, world and weather alike dancing hesitantly along either side of it for months before committing, finally, to genuine warmth.
Still, the seasons always win in the end, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that time always wins in the end. Even climate change, rapidly accelerating and now fully perceptible in real time, has not yet found a way to defeat that which is older than us all. We find ourselves now in a world in full indigo flower, and the storms are an integral part of it.
Today, the skies are adrift with dove-colored bands, hovering somewhere between pale gray and pure white: not the clouds of a clear day, but none that hold weather for us, either.
Yet.
There is no indigo visible to speak of, save perhaps the band of clouds to the northwest when the sun emerges to cast its gaze momentarily upon them. Even that, in truth, is more violet than indigo; too much gray of the snows to the north infuse it. But the western sky is still a darker blue, one that forms a perfect backdrop to the image of small birds, still able to perch on bare, unleafed branches for a few days, perhaps weeks yet. The starlings stake out the uppermost reaches; they are invader birds, unbothered by the lack of foliage, tough enough to feel no need to hide themselves and proud enough to preen in full public view.
Even so, the birds as a whole remain relatively scarce this year — no grosbeaks yet, nor any finches save the winter ones, to occupy the lower branches. For now, those spaces remain reserved for the catkins.
The aspens are a funny thing, at least by humans standards; they are not, as it happens, highly successful at what we regard as “reproduction.” The male aspens bear pollen; the female aspens, seeds. Both are blown upon the wind, there to find each other and mate by chance . . . or, more likely, to fall to the earth at some place of greater or lesser distance, thence to lead a short and solitary life.
And yet, the aspens here are ubiquitous, living and thriving and . . . yes, reproducing. Root and bark are the essential aspects here: bark to breathe; root to travel beneath the frost line in search of earth and water and light, thence to manufacture “clone” stands of the same tree whence it came. It’s why stands of aspen tend to recognizeably singular in identity, showing much more than a mere family resemblance; they literally grow from each other as clones. It’s unusual to find such a process in most of the natural world, certainly this close to home, but it works, and works well, for the balance of our small world here.
For the moment, the trees remain still largely bare, beaded with potential but declining as yet to leaf out into their fullest selves. It’s no doubt wise; we will have many more freezing temperatures before spring settles in for the duration, and just as doubtless more snow as well.
But for the moment, the air, if not anything close to warm, is at least relatively mild. The trees stretch, tall and strong, in supplication toward the heavens. And clouds notwithstanding, we already inhabit a world in full indigo flower, one that will soon flower in more literal ways beneath the blue of the sky.
~ Aji
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