This morning wears a softness known only in the brief moments between seasons.
The valley air shifts with the sun’s slow journey through the year. Spring and fall mornings arrive either soggy as yesterday’s rain or crisp as the first bite of an apple. Winter air stands immaculate—or cuts through clothes with the hiss of an unkind wind. Summer’s humidity clings to the skin like wet wool.
But these days—these rare days between spring and summer—offer something precious: air soft, moist, and cool as a rose petal against your cheek.
Kind air. Smooth air. Air perfumed with the breath of growing things: leaf compost, the green pulse of grass, clover blossom, honeysuckle, rambling rose, violets. This air is a nursery blanket, spread smooth by loving hands to welcome new life.
Last week at dawn, a fox emerged from shadow with her kit. She bathed her young one’s copper belly in the soft glow of morning light, her tongue gentle and methodical. I watched from my window until their two bushy tails—one large, one small—bounced into the bamboo grove. The kit’s tail flagged joy with each bound, while the mother’s moved with the purpose that comes from knowing.
Life swells everywhere. Plants bloom or carry seed. The redbud trees that once lit the valley like neon signs now bend under the weight of their own future—more seedpod than leaf. Their spent blossoms carpet the ground beneath, pink giving way to green, flower yielding to fruit.
Soon, spotted fawns will appear on legs as uncertain as new questions, never straying more than a breath from their mothers’ sides. Already, when my wheelchair trespasses too near the lawn’s edge, warning snorts rise from unseen mothers hiding in the deep cover of new leaves. Their sharp exhales carry messages older than words: Stay back. New life rests here. We are vulnerable and fierce.
The valley cradles these mornings in gentle light. Birth and growth, mother and child, sunlight and shadow—all held in perfect balance in this fleeting softness between seasons.