The hammock spinners are back.

On a warmer than usual morning last week, the sun rose over their gossamer village, silken cups of arachnid architecture slung and hanging motionless from the dried tips of last year’s goldenrod stalks, the ones the winds couldn’t smack down. Thin cottony tufts of fog (known to us as the breath of God) move imperceptibly across the field, shape-shifting their way into the soft golden light of this fresh day. I move among them in silence, caught in a web of wonder.

Making my way to the southeast corner of the land on a diagonal path smoothed by Patrick’s skill on the mower, I headed toward the site where we buried what was left of the goat barn that burned to the ground one humid July while we slept. We call this spot '“the Grave” and it lies exactly opposite another memorial to the land’s pain, “the Wound”, in the far northwest corner some seventeen acres away. The previous owners leased this acreage to a local farmer who had cobbled together a patchwork of fields from different neighbors, growing the usual corn and soybeans on alternating annual rotations. We met him that spring we arrived on the land, shook his hand to continue the lease and got about planning our land blessing ceremony, not realizing he would cut down several mature trees along the property line so he and his farming equipment could access our field from the neighboring one. We discovered the damage during the land blessing and ended the arrangement the next day. It was a hard lesson in city-kid assumptions about rural handshakes and leased acreage, and a reminder that not everyone lives by the creed to ask permission before taking something. In the twenty-three years since, no trees have grown in that spot.

Somehow, though, between these two points of reckoning, a thriving and vibrant bowl of life has emerged and carries on; we get to traverse its expanse as often as we choose. The field is turning to woods one season and one section at a time as thick stands of rapidly maturing sycamore saplings fill in where the corn used to grow. Mockingbirds have made their secret nests in the uppermost branches of the black walnuts and blue beech and beneath their leafy canopies, the walking paths are a spongy carpet of moss I could easily nap on top of without a care (the minute the paths are dry, I promise). How does Spring still surprise us with its familiar newness each year? In January’s dark and bleak embrace, we wonder if we’ll ever see a hummingbird again and now here they are, buzzing us as we walk from the front deck to our car, demanding to know when the feeders will be refilled. Can the fireflies be far behind?

We need surprises these days. The shock and horror of the world’s ongoing wars and violence parade in front of our sickened faces each day and it’s impossible to look away as our sisters and brothers live through nightmares in their waking hours. If we really are all in this together and for the longest of long hauls, we need a season like spring to distract us even for a moment with her raucous avian symphonies, riots of color and warm reassuring breaths from the south that give us renewed strength for whatever will come. We cannot survive without beauty, spontaneity and moments of wonder. We rightfully hunger for spring’s generosity and kindness because we need to remember our own and then fling it in all directions.

I think that’s why I prefer to walk in the morning, just as the sky is shredding the darkness with shards of new light. I hold dawn’s hand and we step into what’s possible, what’s spread out at our feet to pick up and offer to someone else. I chase ideas through the woods, listen for new and returning winged relatives tapping holes into dead trunks and wonder what will be asked of me today. It’s anyone’s guess and I plan to show up for it, like those deer did last week…

There were seven of them and they were just ten feet away on the other side of the bathroom window’s wavy glass pane, browsing for new grass among the dead ironweed sticks. I saw them from the upstairs east-facing window first before racing down to get a better look, hoping not to startle them (need to do more research about a deer’s eyesight, how they register motion, what’s their peripheral vision like—all that stuff) as I went about my morning ablutions. Even more graceful and elegant up close, they slowly picked their way from one patch to the next, lifting their magnificent heads now and then when they heard or saw something I couldn’t see at all. A young buck was among them, seemed to be leading them farther south with his velvety antlers when it happened. I moved just one step closer to the window and all seven heads raised up, fourteen eyes on the movement they saw through the glass. As one, the herd leapt high, white tails pointing upward in near-perfect formation until their hooves found the path to the Grave, leaving me once again silent in wonder. Within minutes, I was dressed with walking sticks in hand and out the back mud room door to follow them, or at least find where those hooves met the soft chocolate earth.

Spring…it never gets old.