SCENT OF SPRING
The first bees are bumbling among sprays of blossom like fireworks. At last, after the dreariest winter, with a golden blaze of sunlight comes the...
THAnK goodness that’s over! So long, wettest-Februaryon-record; good riddance, miserable winter. For the first time in ages, the forecast in some parts of Britain is predicting sun for several days.
The bright months are back again, and how welcome they are. As David Hockney recently put it, in a caption of a painting of butter-golden daffodils created while he is self-isolating in normandy: ‘Do remember they can’t cancel spring.’
Mares’ tails of cirrus clouds are luminous against the blue. The slow ease of a heron flying down our valley in north Yorkshire promises blossoming days.
Thank you, British climate. It is as though God has opened a new packet of fine weather.
How we long — and need — to keep calm and carry on. We are all ‘key workers’ in the task of holding our worries down and lifting our spirits up. now, a fair week is, for many, here to help.
A shower of sunlight (free vitamin D), breaths of the cleanest air this country has known for decades — as there are so few cars on the road — and the sight of the year’s first bees are balms for your soul.
From now on, from the early mornings, those who can will carefully be setting out to see the day.
You may leave the house tense, the fear of the voices in your phone and on the radio still playing in your inner ear.
But as you walk, something wonderful happens. The pace of your steps changes as you find the rhythm of the day. An old soldier once told me: ‘You can walk fear into the ground.’
We live near Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. A great tit, immaculate in lemon, grey and black, surveyed our family. He was thinking of starting his own.
A mile of track brought us out into wide sky and the tufted roof of the Pennine Moors. ‘Curlews!’ I exclaimed, ‘Hear them? That bubbling cry?’ A pair crossed the valley below us, twisting through the wind.
Why do birdwatchers love their hobby? While you study birds you are in their world — the full, real world, a place of pure existence.
Here, there are no clocks, no dates and no headlines, only the momentary and eternal time of the wild. Birds transport you. The effect works in a garden, in a park and even through your window if you are forced to stay in.
And how the birds are loving these fresh, glowing days. We saw lapwings cartwheeling, jackdaws spiralling, oystercatchers and gulls visiting from the coast.
In the cities you will see wood pigeons, iridescent starlings and sparrows, all keeping the appropriate social distance from you.
There are lambs in the fields, shaky with the novelty of every moment. As they grow and strengthen, they will run races in the evenings and play king-of-thecastle on molehills.
In these worrying times, try to look at the world as they see it, with plum trees, thorns and magnolia setting off sprays of blossom like fireworks.
Magpies are building in the taller trees, stitching little forts of twigs. ‘A magpie flies like a frying pan!’ wrote T.H.White, author of The Once And Future King.
I think of all magpies as goodluck charms, for you never see one alone. If you do, the other is hiding: count each as half a joy.
You never know what a walk will bring. A piebald shire horse leaned over a fence and our little boy stroked her nose. The look of joy on our son’s face and the patient affection of the mare were profoundly beautiful.
It was a gentle, ancient contact between strangers, part of the friendship between humans and horses that is 6,000 years old and will endure as long as we do. Hikers in the lanes are nodding and smiling at each other as never before.
As the new warmth falls on your face and sets the grass glowing, you can almost believe sunlight has a scent. The rough fields give up a smell of mud and sedge, green-gold, earthy and reedy. It is the tang of the turning of the year, the return of colour and hope.
FOr those inside our cities, a view lit by the sun, trees bright with buds and the glitter of the sky are blessings now. You can hear the dawn chorus in the early morning, instead of the grate of traffic.
You do not need to head for the coast, for the national parks or for beauty spots to collect some of the treasures of this spring.
Moss on a wall, a lance of sunlight, a shadow blueing, a chaffinch singing: these are the gifts of life.
We returned from our walk philosophical. My favourite proverb, from Finland, is useful when I’m outside and in. ‘Don’t jump before you reach the ditch!’
What does it mean? Fear only makes the bad seem worse. If we are careful, the advice is that we can still go out.
Let us relish it all while we can. Beauty and consolation surround us. The swallows will come back, and the swifts will return. The days will warm with the light.
We can live only in days, and days as bright as these are godsends. Look up. Smile. Greet the spring.