Snippets & Sketches: A perfect spring day

In her column “Snippets & Sketches,” Lily Zou reflects on what it means to live a beautiful life.

I start in a light jog from my dorm. The air is cool on my skin, but soon heat rises from the soles of my feet and I can feel my face flush from exertion. My feet turn automatically, following a route made familiar from countless runs.

I jog along a tree-lined sidewalk. In autumn, the leaves turned gold and flaming red, swirling and carpeting the pavement as they fell. In winter, the branches were barren and often gleaming wet from rain. Now they are green — a green I want to drink in — and filled with birds’ nests and birdsong.

Soon I pass through a meadow of grass. As summer turned to winter, I watched the grass change from dry yellow hay to dew-covered shoots of green. Now it is more than knee height, soft from a distance, rough and prickly against my bare legs. With a start, I notice it is turning dry and hay-colored again. Has it been so long?

Past the meadow, the trail ducks under the deep shade of oaks. Their gnarled limbs are rough and dark, but spotted with lichen in a green so bright it is startling. A little stream runs by, grasses growing thick around it.

The first time I discovered this trail — one of those bewildered days early in freshman fall — I was delighted. It was everything I could dream of. No matter how overwhelmed I was, when I came to this stretch of trail, I would gaze up at the canopy of oaks and let out a breath.

I have run this trail more or less weekly since then. It has become like a familiar face to me; I know it in different lights, in rain and shine, and have watched it change with the seasons. I am fond of it like I am fond of an old friend. At the same time, it is hard to recover the wonder of that first run. What had been a source of surprise and delight fades into the background. I pass things lost in thought, without really seeing them, so that if you had asked, ‘Were there flowers in the meadow? How high were the waters? Is the stream on the left or right?,’ I would not have been able to answer. I almost forgot there was a stream.

Soon I emerge from the shade and am before the entrance to the Dish. The first glance is always inviting — a high ridge of grass, and a light hovering just beyond it, promising fresh air and endless space.

I am running up the first gentle slope. My heart sighs. The sky is vast above me; I am in a high place, surrounded by light and air. Grass is green and thick all around; the hills roll past each other; scrubby dark trees dot the landscape. The sky is the most perfect azure, filled with clumps of shapely white clouds. It is exactly like one of those Italian Renaissance paintings — or rather, those paintings are exactly like it.

I realize with full conviction that today is the most perfect day in creation: cool, blue, full of air and light, spring’s opening bluster beginning to be tempered with loveliness.

Suddenly I stop in my tracks, astonished. Before me on the grassy hill is a flock of wild turkeys. I stare in wonder and delight. Only think — turkeys! I glance around, expecting a crowd of onlookers, but other hikers and joggers continue on their way. Do they not notice? Or have they become used to such things, so that it is no longer remarkable?

By the road grow tall purple thistles. Seeing them makes me so happy. I can’t help but smile and think, these are Eeyore’s thistles.

I am past the point at which I usually turn back. Just a little more, I tell myself, because the whole of spring is before me, unfolding as I go higher, rolling past itself. I pause at a crest. I have never before noticed how many shades of green there are on campus and in the surrounding hills. The silver water of the Bay gleams, cradled between purple mountains which recede into the blue, blue sky.

On my way back, I notice a ground squirrel standing stubbornly upright by the side of the road, heedless of the joggers and walkers that thunder past. I pause before it: “Hello.” It does not budge. Nearby, a woodpecker jabs at a log. A blue jay flits from tree to tree. The wild turkeys have moved on.

This is the joy of spring: the feeling of something so fresh, so lovely, that almost arouses reverence or, rather, pure delight. I feel like Colin did from “The Secret Garden” — the spring has come, heralded by golden trumpets that you can almost hear.

Too often I am buried in my cares, and do not see the world. But when I do see the world, happiness is cheap. Delight comes from a flock of wild turkeys, or an impertinent ground squirrel, or gay purple thistles bending in the breeze. I want to take delight in simple things, in eternal things, like the changing of the seasons. Then I begin to feel, how can one not be happy, not be in perpetual delight and wonder? It is spring.

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