Childhood Memories of Spring

Earlier this morning, I took a little mental walk today and went down to the creek to sit and think about things.  I love watching the little stream show the first signs of life.  New fern shoots unfolding and pushing up from under the wet, leathery  remnants of  leaves blown here by last fall’s winds.  The leaves settled in at the base of the willows and spent the winter under the pack of snow and ice.
I know it is April 1st but I don’t feel much like pranks today.  I’m sort of melancholy and thinking about cycles of life.  This coming weekend will be the first Easter with just my hubby and I in the house.  It may be a new month, but it is the 54th time I will experience that new month.  Still,  I’ve always loved Spring.  Where I grew up Spring was a time of wild flowers, morels, and the magic of longer, brighter days. The season will carry me through any moments of  things seeming “off kilter” as my Mother used to say.
I loved being outside on the farm my parents owned. While I loved the fields and hedgerows, I loved the hills that were too steep to plow and the boggy areas that were too wet to farm even with drainage tiles and ditches.  These wild places where I played were not  as heavily wooded as they were two centuries before in the 1700s when the colonists first started creating forts and trading posts in this Indiana Ohio border area.  My father kept all but the steepest hills mowed so brush did not grow and start the reforestation process.  Even the mucky bottom ground, as we called it, that edged the tiny remaining pockets of wooded swamp that was the natural state of much of the Old Northwest had had many of the hardwoods lumbered, and of course disease had killed the elm trees.
It was a fairly tame place really but I loved what was left of the wildness of the area.  To get a feel for what I am talking about I have linked a pic of the what is now a nature preserve but was just the back of the neighbor’s farmwhen I was growing up.

It was a beautiful place to experience Spring as a child.  I was lucky.  I have wonderful memories of early childhood in natural world.  The picture links to the site listing for the preserve and a downloadable guide.  If you are in Northeastern Indiana in the Spring, I recommend a visit.