How Winter Turns to Spring

This is the tale of how winter turns to spring in the redwood forest. It may be different where you live, especially if you dwell in the jungle or the desert. But one thing's for certain - Mother Nature is behind the change.

On a cold and rainy winter morning, Mother Nature chooses a faerie, who feels an ever-so-slight itching in her feet. She rolls over in her covers, sees the rain, and refuses to get out of bed. The itching becomes ever-so-slightly more itchy.

The faerie tosses this way and that, snuggling deeper into her warm nest, trying to pretend that everything is exactly the same as it was before the itching began. But the Great Mother has been at this for eons. She’s encountered fae much more stubborn than this one. So the itch becomes a tingle, and the faerie's tossing becomes a torrent. This goes on and on, with the itchy tingle getting worse and the farie nearly destroying her bed in stubborn refusal to leave it.

Eventually, there comes a moment when the faerie catches a reflection of herself in one of the shiny surfaces in her room (for faeries love all things shiny and surround themselves with their glinty treasures). As she stares into her own eyes, she knows the truth: Mother Nature chose her to begin the Spring dance. There is no going back.

Unable to stop herself, the faerie leaps from her bed and flies from her cranny, toward the fairy orchid at the forest's very center. This is where she begins Spring’s dance.

As her tiny feet skip across the ground, through the sorrel, along the fronds, leaping and twirling and twisting, the dance calls others to her, and they feel the tingle, the itch, the refusal, the call. When they, too, can no longer deny it, they fly to the sorrel patch and join the dance. At first only a few faeries join, then dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. Then every faerie in the forest has left their warm nests.

The wheel of life begins to turn. The rhythms of faerie feet remind the seeds it’s time to sprout, the plants it’s time to grow, and the trees it’s time to awaken. The faeries dance for days and days, until the tingle fades to an itch, the itch to an ever-so-slightly itchy situation, and then, one by one, they return to their snuggly beds and cozy blankets.

The faeries sleep, knowing that while it may look like winter outside, Mother Nature's call has been answered. Soon the fairy orchid will bloom. and Spring will arrive in all her flowery splendor.