The First Sign of Spring Isn't Something You See

Most people wait for spring to arrive with something they can see.

The first daffodil.

A tree beginning to bud.

The last patch of snow disappearing from the garden.

For me, it usually arrives much earlier.

It arrives as a scent.

Not all at once. Not with any certainty. Just a quiet moment when the air carries something different. The earth begins to warm beneath your feet. The woods breathe differently. Before the landscape looks any different, it somehow feels different.

I've learned to trust that.

One afternoon after maple season had ended, Greg and I decided to explore a part of the Cobble we hadn't walked before. The snow had gone, but the forest was still bare enough for sunlight to find its way through the trees. We weren't following a trail. We rarely do. We simply picked a direction and started walking.

From a distance the hillside looked impossibly steep. The sort of place you assume you couldn't cross. But landscapes have a habit of changing once you step into them. Sometimes we climbed. Sometimes we slid down on our backsides. Sometimes we stopped to work out the next few feet before carrying on.

That is one of the things I love most about being in the woods.

The landscape asks you to slow down.

Halfway across the hillside, something stopped me.

Not something I saw.

Something I smelled.

The sun had warmed the carpet of pine needles beneath the trees and, with every step, they released the most extraordinary fragrance. It wasn't overpowering. It wasn't floral. It was simply the smell of a forest waking up after winter.

For a moment, everything else disappeared.

The steep hillside.

The next step.

Even the conversation.

It felt as though we had walked into a room filled with a scent so beautiful that it demanded silence.

I still remember it perfectly.

As we continued, we found ourselves getting closer to the earth. The slope became so steep that we had to lower ourselves over rocks and fallen trees. Looking down instead of ahead, we noticed things we would have walked straight past on level ground.

Then we found the bones.

The remains of a bear lay quietly among the pine needles, undisturbed. Sunlight filtered through the trees and rested gently across the place where it had chosen to lie.

We didn't touch anything.

We didn't move anything.

We simply stood there.

It felt like we had been allowed to witness something deeply private. Not sad. Not frightening. Simply part of the quiet rhythm of the forest. The bear had become part of the landscape again.

Even now, I can still return to that hillside.

Not by looking at a photograph.

By remembering the scent.

We often think memories are things we see, but I don't believe that's always true. Some of the memories that stay with me most vividly begin with smell. Warm pine needles after winter. Damp earth beginning to wake. Wild rose geranium growing near the Cabin in midsummer, filling the woods with a fragrance you'd expect to find in a carefully tended garden rather than on a mountainside.

Those moments never really leave.

You carry them with you.

Sometimes they'll return unexpectedly. Standing in an airport. Sitting in traffic. During a difficult family gathering. For just a moment, you're back in the woods. You can almost feel the warmth of the sun through the trees and breathe the same air again.

Nature has a remarkable way of giving us places we can return to without ever going back.

Perhaps that's one of the greatest gifts of paying attention.

The seasons don't simply pass through the landscape.

If we're present enough to notice them, they become part of us.

This Week, We Noticed...

• Warm pine needles have a way of announcing spring long before the trees do.
• The steepest paths often reveal the things we would never find on level ground.
• Some places stay with us because of what they smelled like, not what they looked like.