Although the temperature has been getting into the seventies regularly, you can tell it's still late wintertime in the woods. There's a silver haze on the green. It feels quiet, and a little empty, and a little chilly in the shade. Everything is delicate and spare. She prances and chirps. She lies down and looks around. Thursday afternoon, March 5: We have nowhere to be, nowhere else to go but all the way around the evergreen loop. Few people are here now, this early in the season, but this is Hoyt Arboretum, in the heart of the city, and it's a popular place. Sometimes I long for a little piece of land of our own, away from the sounds of traffic and other people, where we could spread a blanket, build a fort, make fairy houses, read in a patch of sunlight, make a fire when it gets cold. But there's something so precious about this preserve, and so sweet about its convenience, just across town. Birds are so easy to hear right now — no leaves on the trees to muffle their excited trill — and so are other things. What's that noise? She halts and gasps and asks dramatically, several times a day. What's that noise? An airplane, a bird, a tiny stream gurgling through a culvert. A far-off truck, a motorcycle, a leaf blower doing its work in the neighborhood just around the bend. There are so many things to hear in the urban woods. What a beautiful city we live in! What a beautiful state. Yesterday I drove home from the children's museum while she slept, tired from her play. Weaving for a couple of miles through these same woods, past the garden, past the playground, past the flowering trees and the view of the city below, I couldn't drive slowly enough, listening to her breathe softly behind me in the back seat, paint on her face, roses in her cheeks. Down the hill, through downtown, over the bridge, back to the house. What a commute. Let it be long, and slow. My favorite season has arrived.
