“The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”

— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

After a winter of indoor days — punctuated only by dutiful dashes for supplies or brisk runs through a faithfully snow-covered world — I find myself giddy at the first hints of spring and all it carries with it.

I learned early that to be outside is to be truly awake — long before I encountered Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, that luminous theology of the natural world. And so, as March unfurled, I remembered the landscapes of my childhood, when I was mostly alone but never lonely, searching not for anything in particular, but for whatever might be sensed. For whatever beauty and grace were already there, quietly unfolding.

I remember how skunk cabbage pushed up through the thinning snow. A haze of red and green brushed the tips of trees. Then came birdsong — robins, ovenbirds, phoebes — threading the air. Our hens began laying in earnest; the lone rooster trailed them with restless purpose. Soon, chicks followed. Nearby, friends kept long nights in barns, welcoming calves and kids into the world after days spent readying fields for planting.

There was grace in all of it — in the awakening, in the birth — and I felt lucky to witness it. Only later did I come to understand how much those early springs — those seasons of paying attention, of bearing witness — had shaped me. More than I could have known then.

Now, in these past weeks at Hildene, I feel it again. The greenhouse has burst into a thousand shades of green, each seedling a quiet insistence. Chickens wander through grass that gathers itself in soft, bright clumps. Calves and kids have arrived to our barns, as have red-winged blackbirds to the edges of our woods, presaging the broader songbird migration to come. I make no real attempt to hide my childlike awe.

There is much, always, to worry over — in our lives, in the wider world. But still, I invite you: come walk the trails. Visit the barns, the paddocks, the greenhouse. Come alone. Bring your children, your neighbors, your grandchildren. Tuck your phones away.

Something enduring is here.

It is already happening.

All you have to do is look.