Spring

It was Spring as we drove up the river -- blazing sun -- new leaves pushing out everywhere -- a real Spring, such as we almost never get, here in the dream country, where usually all that happens is the Winter rains turning gradually to Spring rains. But this was Spring, Spring as I remember it from Connecticut. It got so warm in the car that the fan didn't do it, and we had to roll down the windows.

In the Wahclella ravine, it was not so warm. The sun's not high enough, this early in the year, to peer over the edges of the gorge. Still cool enough for me to miss my jacket, and to be glad of my sun-hat for its warmth, not its shade. And the Wahclella, which is a pretty creek in August, was a serious river, churning itself against the rocks, and in places it even showed that pale turqoise color you usually only see in the glacier-melt of high mountain streams.

But we came across a patch of trilliums blossoming, and there were purple blossoms in the moss. A hawk hovering high above, where the sun turned the lips of the gorge gold. Water-ousels streaked past us, singing a rare, complicated song. Still, when we got to the falls, the splash-pool was five times deeper than we'd ever seen it, and the water was a cold, cold, dark green. I tried to make the memory of swimming in it real, but the imaginative effort was too much for me. Not quite Spring-like enough for that.