Curiosity is Your Best Guide: Discovering the First Signs of Spring
“Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help shall all be saved.”
—Jane Goodall
Photo Credit: Grace Gelder
I’ve been going out onto the land doing observing what I can. I’d like to report profound shifts in my consciousness, but my observations are more earthly. I notice which way the wind blows, which plants are water loving, and what grows at the edges between the brambles and the stream. I learned recently that the pagan holiday Imbolc, which celebrates the early signs of spring, is on the 1st of February.
At first, mesmerised by winter, I laughed it off. “There aren’t any signs of spring yet,” I told myself. But taking my skeptics hat off, and putting my land observer’s hat on, I saw signs of spring everywhere, the most show-off-y of which are the first blooms of the daffodils and snow drops. Later my children run into the house and shout, “c’mon, c’mon!” Unceremoniously, they drag me out into the garden. They squat down and pick up a big gelatinous lump, and thrust it in my face. “Frog spawn,” they declare in unison, their eyes shining.
Photo Credit: Grace Gelder
I realised this week, on my meanderings across the land, that in my earnest attempts to ascertain some wisdom from the natural systems all around me, I had forgotten the most important route toward knowledge: curiosity. The children have it in spades. They have noticed far more than me. Everything I point out to them they sigh exhaustedly and say, “I know, I saw that ages ago!”
So my resolution as winter shifts toward early spring, is to bring more curiosity to my own observations, to trust the effervescent spirit of intuition in the collection of knowledge. There’s nothing more satisfying than meeting another being without preconceptions, but I’m all too prone to want to know intimate details upfront, to look up the name of a plant before I’ve spent time watching how its leaves waft in the shallow parts of the stream. After all, my aim is not to have encyclopaedic knowledge of the world around me, but to fall in love with it.
