Spring Is a Verb

or The Winds of Change

On the desert side of the highway, dust devils spun through the four-winged salt bush and cholla—spun, plumed, disintegrated.  On the valley side, where the Rio Grande flows (if water that is half mud can be said to flow), alfalfa fields pinned the soil down, and the dust devils left it alone.  Other patches of green showed—family farms, elm trees alive with insignificant blooms, a faint haze at the tips of the cottonwoods.

My parents just visited for a few days, and we took a drive south of town, where the New Mexican spring with its stark contrasts lay before us, spread out from one horizon to the other.  The desert side of it is suspicious of the calendar and has no intention of greening up (as we think of it, without irony) until there is no possible way, no-how, not at all, nary a chance, that there might be a frost.  As far as the desert plants are concerned, that will be sometime in May.  Perhaps.  (It's usually in mid-April, but why should they have faith in "usually?")  By then, we may also have had some rain—not much, but some—and the salt bush, big sage, and chamisa are happy to bide their time on that off-chance.  They bank most of their energy until midsummer, when the monsoon rains arrive.

Friday

In the settled lands, however, especially along the valleys, we believe in the calendar and are kicking up our heels at today's equinox.  We have our garden plants and our water; we cultivate the land and bring green to the desert.  We bargain with frost and grow things that don't really mind it, even if later on these aliens will need shelter from the harsh realities of summer.

And the wind blows.  Short-lived whirlwinds, where cold and warm air meet for a few dizzy moments; gusts that ricochet off the cars on the road and make drivers fight their steering wheels; warm breezes that lure you outside; sudden chilly ones that send you back in again; gentle currents that carry the fragrance of sand cherry blossoms on their backs.

Spring and wind are almost synonymous here, both of them in constant—and not always forward—motion.  The pace of action has been stunning this week, when the temperatures have been in the 70's F every day.  Every time I've stepped into the garden some new change has presented itself:  a new tulip in bloom, another sprinkling of ipheion; the tarragon and walking onions suddenly ready for a generous harvest; leaves popping out all along the Lady Banks rose; seedlings growing their first true leaves and then some.  Town is a mass of ornamental plum and pear trees in bloom, with the occasional forsythia bush on fire in the sunshine.  Songbirds dart busily in and out of juniper trees.  All the season's potential energy has turned kinetic—we've crested the hill and begun to rush forward into spring.

Saturday

As I was sitting on the patio working through that idea in my notebook this afternoon, a sudden wind chased me inside.  It wasn't so much a dust devil as a dust, dead leaves, and litter devil (does everything have to be more complicated in cities?), and it reminded me that no matter how lovely it is, spring is still an unsettled season, a verb season.  It is one of capricious change, of ricocheting forces, of sudden frosts and fast-moving storm fronts, a dizzying mix of warm and cold air, of giddy pleasure and champing-at-the-bit frustration.

I am telling myself all this because, if the last few years are anything to go by, at some point in April we will have a good ten days of cold, gray, dreary weather.  (New Mexico dreary, that is:  sunglasses may not be appropriate at all times.)  It might even rain.  In the past, this cold spell has arrived after I've put all the warm clothes away for the season and have stocked the refrigerator with cool, refreshing salads.  It has been a grumpy time, because I have forgotten that spring is a verb.  I'm trying to remember this year, to let the wind caution me to be a suspicious desert plant.

But oh, how hard it is to stay suspicious when we're on the valley side of springtime, and we transplants are reveling in the sunshine...

Sunday

The Pull of Gravity

or The Top of the Pass

Just at the halfway point between my home in Albuquerque and my parents' in Denver, Raton Pass snakes its way over the edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  The summit of the pass marks the state line, with New Mexico to the south, Colorado to the north.  As with most mountain passes, while you climb it you can't see much except the pine trees around you and the road winding before you.  You might catch a glimpse of a vista out to the sides now and then, but the road is your only guide to what lies ahead—the ascent is a little too steep for you to see anything else but mountainside.

Raton isn't one of the West's most attractive passes—in fact, as a child I disliked it because it was too "disorganized" (and I don't think I was a particularly well-organized child)—but since moving to New Mexico I've learned to love it.  No matter how many times you've driven it, no matter how well you know what's coming up, the moment when you crest the hill and can see across into Colorado, with the Spanish Peaks towering before you, is one of delightful, breathtaking surprise.  The summit marks such a clear divide—for a moment, in the rear view mirror you can see the high, grassy plains of northeastern New Mexico stretched out behind you, pale golden-green fading into blue at the horizon; in front of you rise the Colorado Rockies with all their buttresses and crenellations.  Then gravity catches you again, and when it pulls you down the Colorado side of the pass, you're in another world.

For some reason, this past year I've become fascinated with cusps—tipping points, verges—those moments of balance, of poise, between one thing and another, when suddenly you reach the top of a pass and can see all around you, when for the space of a breath you feel as if you're free of the pull of gravity.

With the equinox just around the next bend, we'll soon have reached one of the year's most important cusps; we'll be crossing the Great Divide between sleep and wakening, cold and warmth, dark and light.  But in the long, leisurely New Mexico turning of seasons, we have many smaller divides to cross as well, each with its moment of balance, its pause at the crest of the hill.  The crocuses have already passed the summit; the tulips are still in the ascent.  The sand cherries are right on the cusp, poised, taking that deep breath before momentum pulls them forward into a bright, new world.

In the rear view mirror, you can still see winter, fading into the horizon.