I was a fanciful child, always reading and imagining. I remember that in my childhood home, I had two favorite places.
The first was my bedroom closet, which was enormous, or at least it seemed so at the time. It had a sort of metal door inside at floor level (housing a duct of some kind?) that had a screw at each corner. I used to imagine that there was another world behind the metal plate, and if I just could find my way in, I’d have all sorts of adventures.
The second place was outdoors on the grass underneath the Japanese cherry tree. I’d lie down and stare up through the pink blossoms and watch the sun through the leaves, which would make a gold outline on the edge of every single leaf. Both places magical. Both equally alive in my imagination.
Every day that I can, I go outside. Sometimes I’m there for an hour, sometimes more if I’m lucky. And right now it is just magical out there. California gets a bad rap for a lot of things, and rightfully so, but one thing California does right is early spring. God, it’s glorious. We’ve had a little rain, the hills are still green, and the native wildflowers are all popping up. I hear birds I’ve never heard before, and see animal tracks and scat I don’t recognize. Everything is waking up.
Out walking through a canyon today, I couldn’t help but imagine myself in Narnia. Were there dryads in the oak trees I passed? Would they speak to me? I felt I could hear them when the wind passed through their branches.
“Lucy’s eyes began to grow accustomed to the light, and she saw the trees that were nearest her more distinctly. A great longing for the old days when the trees could talk in Narnia came over her. She knew exactly how each of these trees would talk if only she could wake them, and what sort of human form it would put on. She looked at a sliver birch; it would have a soft, showery voice and would look like a slender girl, with hair blown all about her face, and fond of dancing.”
“She looked at the oak: he would be a wizened, but hearty old man with a frizzled beard and warts on his face and hands, and hair growing out of the warts. She looked at the beech under which she was standing. Ah! - she would be the best of all. She would be a precious goddess, smooth and stately, the lady of the wood.”
C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian
I just want to encourage you: If you can get out right now, do it. Don’t miss the poppies and the fiddlenecks and the red maids and the blue dicks and the milkmaids and the buttercups. Don’t miss the buckeyes unfurling their vernal green leaves or the pink of the wild plums. Don’t miss the nesting falcons, the foraging bluebirds, the shy flickers. Don’t miss the tiny rills, the deep gullies, the ephemeral streams. Don’t miss spring. Get out there and see everything waking up.