I remember watching the spring come on; the thaw and swelling buds. I had to burn off the snow with a lot of fire to make a spot to set up camp and cover, cause I came out at the end of winter, but not quite the beginning of spring. Its different seeing the season change when you live in the woods. You get to feel the change like you’re supposed to; inside you change too. It means more than pretty flowers coming up, changing the tires, or switching the snow jacket for the rain one. 

The nettles hadn’t come up yet, but the birds had. At least up and around the tops of the big leafed maples and alders. The big leafs stand taller than the alders, and they bloom first, even when there’s still plenty of snow on the ground. The smaller alder buds and salmon berries were just starting to swell, but I knew up 80 feet flowers were blooming that you couldn’t see. You could hear them though; among bare branches and tiny fetus leaves. Hummingbirds at the top of the canopy with their airborne engines going from tree to tree, catching insects and dipping their faces excited; with such energy. 

Spring is like being crippled and hungry, then finding a market you really like right next-door. It’s the wanted posters coming down by the hand of the sun. You and this great fiery star, but you know that she has other lovers, and can go cold and shatter your blood, or turn you into dust. 

After burning all the snow off the ground in a place under three big cedars, I chopped and drug saplings, limbed them, built and wove the frame. Then taking the boughs from the saplings worked from the bottom up like shingles, thatching them into the structure. While I was working it was common for one of the hummingbirds to come down and check me out. Whhiiirrr down like a quick tinker bell to my project, hovering over its every corner and side, inspecting with the authority of a master builder. No matter what I happened to be doing, these little birds commanded my respect, so I would cease pending their approval. Not minding me in the least they would inspect as I worked, any new feature with their keen eye and I would either be approved or not. Sometimes the bird would vanish for a moment and come down with one or two of his friends to show my progress, and they would hover and stop, taking in every detail, talking in a language obvious if you knew what most forget. Or if I made a mistake somewhere, would hover, look at the structure, then at me, then back at my shelter, almost shaking their heads before returning to brother or sister, sipping nectar at the surface of the forest. 

Every morning was a miracle. Stepping out and into the world, carpet frozen and brittle, softer in the places where my ladies long warm fingers had touched. Lounging with her and in her, doing much of nothing once done with what needed to be, a purity of the soul I found on which no price can ever be placed. 

What joy, such as I am feign to share, is to be found rolling in the grass, lounging on a bed of pokey needles in the shade of ancient creatures, and the great sun at the edge of a winter receding!! Such is what surrounded me, laying in a small clearing, watching the pull of my woman, swelling me and the plants alike; all things reaching out for her. Who can love her as one who has waited, cold and gaunt, depressed and obscured by winters dearth? With joy proclaimed it is I! It is you! And the great child mothered by the stars! What is a belief but a closing of the mind? a refusal to see the other side of the painting, while missing the signature of the painter. 

One morning still dark I laid listening to a noise outside. The roots underneath me vibrated with the heavy steps of some moving thing not far away. Slow and quiet I put on my head lantern, knife at the ready and furtively pushed aside the door. The roots stopped, and so did I; with my hand out and on the door, kneeling and leaning, I could feel whatever it was freeze at the slight sound I made while rousing. We both stayed like that as if the forest would cover one from the other. The hemlock root under my right knee shook with another heavy step telling me the exact spot of the thing, knowing where the nearest hemlock grew. It stepped again in such a dark and possible confidence of a big cat but heavier; my left unlatched my scabbard, and I drew the blade as my right turned on my lantern. 

Before me 20 feet away, just under the hemlock, next to the ragged rubbed snag so the bones were showing, was a muddy wallow where two eyes glowed, alien to them unused to the shine, five feet up off the ground. Of the rest of it there was no sign. Just the yellow-glows wide and open, and a shudder went through my body. There we were volumes being spoken. The ancient stand-off. Ten minutes passed, and the eyes hadn’t moved a breath. I, on my knees palming the blade, still like a blue-tick on point; I slowly raised my hand to my head, switched off the lantern and returned the door to its place, and me to the bed of boughs. My ears could not have been more keen or my body more sensitive to the network of roots below. Eventually the roots said that the creature was moving slow and away as the vibrations faded until the ground was once again still. 

The morning came, but it came slow, and sleep did not find me. With the first light, I went over to the hemlock by the wallow and read what I had assumed. An elk, not too big, but formidable, had been my partner last night in the still dance, almost always harmless when not in the rut.