Root Season in Texas
Bluebonnets in bloom. Photo: Heisch, Randy, Wildflower Center Digital Library.
You wouldn’t feel them in the sunny wind, the swaying grass, or the smiling crowds of bluebonnets who wave to primrose neighbors, but here in Texas, the lords of winter are determined to sustain a chill.
And if you are among the subtle ones who thrive on words and rhymes, tunes and trifles, or whispers of love, you will find yourself hoping that this spring could be like times way back, before the fathers of the lords of winter first refused to take turns.
Meantime, even at the speed of eighty miles an hour on a trowled Texas highway, you are graced with time to reflect on lessons that begin with a word on the truck you are passing, which says “logis.” That truck is teaching you logistics, the logic of connected things, coming together from far apart places, to meet some purpose in common.
As you steer past the truck, the hillside asks, did you notice our greening logis of seasons, too? We did not approach the lords of winter waving our leaves. We played dead, rooted down, nerved up, kept our attention close to the bone.
Now look at us. Hillsides that did not attempt green for a color in winter are now dressing ourselves fully with life, throwing out our chests toward the equinox, and celebrating our irrepressible power. Like us, y’all are going to live like this again.
The hillsides find ways to message me that root season is not time for wasting. Do not bow down to the lords of winter. Root down, stretch deeply, connect to nourishment that even the lords of winter cannot freeze.
Crowds of waving bluebonnets remind us that the lords of winter shall one day be exhausted, as the laws of spite require: Prepare yourselves well for the day that y’all will rise up smiling; shivering faces now glowing with victory. And y’all will laugh at those silly old lords of winter and all kinds of other stuff.
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