Hiking conditions are treacherous today thanks to the massive rainstorms transforming our hillsides into mud. One year ago today the entire area was under flood waters, but this week's rains have been spaced out enough to keep creeks and rivers mostly within their banks. Campgrounds along the Muskingum are under water, but the roads are passable and our driveway hasn't been washed away, thankfully.
Spring ephemeral season is upon us and I can't miss the opportunity to see what's blooming, so this morning we took advantage of a brief break in the rain to trek up the wet and muddy hill behind our house and visit the spot where the earliest bloodroot blooms. I took my walking stick and my husband lent his arm on the slippery spots but still we couldn't get very close to some of the blooms on the steep, muddy slope, and then the moisture in the air kept fogging up my glasses and the camera's lens.
But we still saw some beauties worth seeing: grape hyacinths livening up our lawn; trout lily leaves spreading over the forest floor but producing, so far, only one blossom; rue anemone brightening up the dark, rotted leaf cover; a blossoming pear tree my husband planted 20 years ago standing alongside the dying crabapple that probably dates to the earliest inhabitants of our property.
And bloodroot, of course. I don't know why I'm so enamored of this tiny white blossom poking up next to a solitary lobed leaf--a blossom so delicate it's easy to overlook, a leaf so unassuming that I can't quite believe it will grow nearly as big as my hand long after the blossoms are gone.
Yesterday my American Lit students encountered the word ephemeral and I found myself compelled to urge them to go out in the woods and look for lovely little spring flowers that bloom for a brief moment and then disappear. There's all over the place in April, I told them, but you'll miss them if you don't make an effort to look.
My students may be too young to be awed by the world's ephemeral beauties, but maybe one day one of them will step out into the woods with eyes wide open and gasp at the loveliness hiding in plain sight. At that point, my work here will be done.
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| Grape hyacinths |
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| Blossoming pear and crabapple |
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| Buckeye leaves bursting forth |
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| Trout lily |
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| Rue anemone |
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| Bloodroot |
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| A patch of club moss I'd never noticed before |
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