The Year Opens with a Bloom

It's happening: the first flowering of the year, the first natural event that shows signs and stirrings of the waking up to come. Here in the Ozarks, that first flower is the Ozark Witch Hazel, Hamamelis vernalis. On a warmer January afternoon, I meandered down the drainage to walk on the Ozark Trail- to make a seasonal pilgrimage up to Stegall Mountain, to experience again what quiet winter woods feel like. My curiosity averted my eyes from the trail, to the ground to see what sprouts. Following the creek to find a crossing my attention rose to the woody stems that hold the soil, and I spotted a flash of color in a muddled dormant landscape.

I feel it an important aspect of inhabiting a place; to come to know it's rhythms. Growing wild only along Ozarks streams, I feel that this plant is indigenous in the same way that I feel a sense of belonging here; and I expect that if the species were animate it would have the same repulsion over the destruction of this patria.