Sign of Spring, Hardwick, VT, #7

April 7, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

My friend down the road emails a complaint regarding the break in my signs of spring project — because there isn’t any! she writes.

True, snow returned yesterday. Enormous, lacy flakes that would have been beautiful December — say — rather than April. It’s spring, all right, but spring is a very lengthy season in Vermont. For those two decades I sugared, through an awful lot of cold and sleet and the terrible early March when 70º temperatures ruined that year’s season and a chunk of our year’s income, the word persistence has gradually evolved in my way of thinking to patience.

Every year, although I’ve lived in New England for most of my life, I somehow have this mistaken notion spring will be brief and brilliant. But autumn is gradual, too, the light at that end of the year bit by bit dwindling before it disappears.

Hidden beneath that coverlet of snow, my garlic I’m sure is beginning to stretch and prod in its lightless place. This morning, the sky bends toward blue. Here’s this sign of spring: light.

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

— Rumi

Hiatus in My Signs of Spring Project

April 6, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

About that April is the cruelest month line…..

Wind tore around the house last night, howling. I left this morning in the dark, with clouds rushing over the waning moon. It was so early the sky was yet that deep blue, nearly black, just before dawn.

The nights are cold enough the warm house is welcome. The 12-year-old, teetering on that cusp of childhood and teenage-land, revamps her cardboard cathouse creation, from a Victorian three-story into a sprawling mansion. The cats, bored with me when I’m not feeding them, clamber excitedly through her construction zone.

April is that in-between month, too. Winter dying — hard, reluctant — the soil not loosened for planting peas. Every day is longer, the sunlight rushing headlong back to us. Bring it on!

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.

— Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

Hardwick, VT, Sign of Spring #6

April 2, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

…. kid skis on snow and field.

Easter afternoon, we skied on snow slushy in open areas, in the woods icy and pine-needle-strewn, pausing to breathe after the vigorous workout. Little streams ran along the trail. My friend remarked on the understory greening as our skis scraped along.

At the top of Elinor’s Hill, we stood for a moment, deciding which way to travel, and I remembered the winter our friend skiing alone fell on this long hill, breaking his leg, and lay on the snow, waiting. Now, in the warmth, we skied without gloves, my daughters sillily lying in the middle of the trail, dramatically waving their skis over their heads. Easter, and no one else was around, save for a few stray folks.

Later, I spoke with these friends, two thousand long miles away, and I realized they must have called us when we stood in the snow and open field at the top of that field, remarking, Remember when….?

The snow still claims more than it doesn’t. Later that night, under a nearly full moon, my daughter returned from a moonlight walk, exclaiming at the cold.

Buying leeks
and walking home
under the bare trees.

— Buson

Craftsbury, Vermont

Hardwick, VT, Sign of Spring #5

April 1, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Hope: the odd collection of dyed eggs, the resurrection, glimmers of green clovers in yet-brown fields, birdsong.

Cold and warm rains, wiggling earthworms, rivulets of melting snow, winter bud on lilacs.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

— Emily Dickinson

Hardwick, VT, Sign of Spring #2

March 30, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

A sign of spring, I suppose, is small-talking with the other parents on a slushy soccer field, watching our kids in a nordic ski relay. Sure, that’s spring in Vermont, borne with the usual good-humor of nordic ski families, and well compensated by an eclectic and unbelievably delicious potluck. At how many potlucks do you find a wedge of homemade sheep’s milk blue cheese?

But a more heartening sign is breaking out the lawn chairs for afternoon in plein air studying. Note snow.

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

— Rumi

Hardwick Sign of Spring #1

March 28, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

My daughter sunk above her knees into the snow over my garden. Somewhere, deep down, lies my garlic. Are you stirring, little white cloves? In your tender hearts, are green shoots stretching?

Bit by bit, the world changes. Starting with the soil, I’m searching for ten solid beacons of spring. How much better does the world get for children than mud?

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.

— Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

Stony Soil Vermont

Vermont Writing

#vermontspring