Can you see it? Can you spot that white bloom? The crocus???

It sits at the foot of a four foot mound of snow. Melting snow. Outside feels so warm all of a sudden. But a bloom? After last week’s cold? Snow?

Yay for spring, is what I say. May it slide right into summer. May it be green and warm and lush.

I think of how much I notice, how much I care about weather. How much I care about place. I know that others are quickly on an airplane if those matter don’t suit. Out of here. Somewhere else. But I have a different perspective. For me, what I want is to be in one place over time. To relate to this piece of earth. Notice where I am, more and more. Go deeper.

And as an artist, that is, in my mind, the only way to relate to my work. I explore; that exploration leads me to another. And another. Wending my way inward. And then putting it out. Out in my art. Out into the world.

I encountered this beautiful passage from Willa Cather’s My Antonia:

The earth was warm under me…I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, it is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.

Oh yes. In nature. And in art.