Originally printed in the May/June issue of Down Country Roads Magazine

The pasqueflowers bloomed early this year. Perhaps they were tricked by the unseasonable weather, like the plums and the crabapples. Dandelions have tried to spring up, but haven’t been overly successful. But the pasques! How could they bloom with no moisture over the winter? So delicate-appearing, so insignificant visually, the first to bloom and the first to fade, but incredibly resilient. They thrive in disturbed areas, like recently logged terrain, and some of the best I’ve seen have been in old wildfire scars. The ones on our place bloom on the north slope of Potato Butte, a rather rugged and blighted prominence, and in the draws around it, where the wind blows the worst. They fight their way up through the rocky ground, rivalling yucca in toughness, spreading their little leaves and opening their petals in a tangle of old grass and bracken. They survive frosty days and wretched conditions no other wildflower is brave enough to face. When the sun is just right, they light up, their transparent petals like stained glass, and the silky hairs catching the sun. Little beacons of hope they become. They don’t bloom when and where it is easy. And they aren’t easy to cultivate. They thrive in adversity.

Fire is on our doorstep. From the burning of the Sandhills, to the fires that have lit the skies and eaten up pasture as near as two miles away, the drought is oppressive. Most have never seen it this bleak this early. There is no telling how the next weeks and months will play out, no telling how much harder things will get, or how beautifully they may turn around. They’ve done so before. The uncertainty makes us feel so very small. But a recent drive took me through an area burned by a devastating fire a few years back and my heart, heavy right now, lifted and soared. The entire forest floor was green. Not the green of grass, but the green of hundreds and thousands of seedling pines. So very small. Little beacons of hope. Thanks to the flames of the fire, the forest is reseeding itself. They thrive in hardship.

A few weeks ago, the sandhill cranes flew overhead like they do each spring, without fail. I love watching them fly together, wing to wing, and their wonderful wild call pierces the heart. “Fly on! Fly on!” they seem to cry, one to one another, in chorus.

Perhaps the bleakness isn’t so all-consuming after all.

The meadowlarks have returned, sitting on fence wires and the tops of fence posts, and they still have things to sing about, raising their melodious voices in solo song.

Perhaps we do, too.

The bluebirds are homemaking as always and the Eurasian collared doves are romancing in the pine trees, cooing lovingly together, laughing and trilling. A lusty little starling, drab and unimpressive, sat outside our window, somehow managing to whistle a glorious ditty around the blade of grass in her beak, singing while she built a nest for her family. What a delightful sound!

If the birds can go about their mundane tasks and their quiet little lives with a song in their hearts, perhaps we can, too. We can tend our homes, we can break bread with our families and neighbors, we can bear one another’s burdens, and hold our loved ones tight and tighter. We can find joy in a smile or a warm embrace, in the bubbling laugh and sloppy kisses of a baby.

And like the pasqueflowers, perhaps we, too, can thrive even in hard frosts and snowless winters and rainless springs. Perhaps we can thrive in churned up earth and on rocky, windblown hillsides, or in the ashy, deadened landscape after a rangeland fire. Like the pine woods, perhaps we can weather a fire and the heat that burns and clears and cleanses, and in its aftermath a whole new forest will grow.

The birds, the flowers, the forest – They were not made for ease. Are we so different?