Spring in all its urgency:  the Vermont winter finally (at long last!) has been slayed by the face of the earth turning round to the sun.  Almost a few days ago, hard-edged filth-ridden glaciers of snow hunkered beneath the roof eaves on the house’s northern side.

Now the peepers sing in their insistent frog party.  The trilliums thrust away last fall’s dried leaves, pressing upwards with their burgundy blooms.  A cluster of spring beauties sprang up overnight in the forest behind our house.

Polly Young-Eisendrath, in her exquisitely wise new book, The Present Heart, writes about our individual human journeys; how the road rises up in ways we’d never imagine to meet us along the way.  This muddy forest road, with the green literally surging in overnight, rises to me.  This afternoon, I knelt on one garden-soiled knee and pressed my face near to the scents of humus, of rot and renewal, of decay and growth:  of spring.