spring outside: reading in the sun
taking a book to the park.
The temperatures are slowly climbing, the sun is peeking its head out for a few hours at a time, and the first buds on trees are starting to bloom. Spring seems to be here to stay in Minnesota and I am squeezing in every outdoor moment that I can. That includes stowing a book in my bag on a walk earlier this week and taking a few minutes to read a chapter on a park bench overlooking my local pond and watching ducks skitter back and forth across the water between sentences.
I was digging into The Nature of Spring by Jim Crumley, a Scottish nature writer, for the first time. This was a lovely spot to take in the first chapter, all about the harbingers of spring, including this lovely excerpt, on hearing the song of a mistle thrush for the first time of the season:
But listen. If you like your harbingers well-toned, jazzily invented and far-carrying, accompanied by coffee al fresco and a birch tree performing passable impressions of the burning bush, and if you are willing to turn a blind eye or two to the snow-patched land…then here on this Cézanne-animated February late afternoon, these are the first syllables of spring.
The first syllables of spring. Absolutely lovely! Just in the first few chapters, I have already come across quite a few new words: whin bushes (gorse), scree (hill covered in stones), jackdaw (a little grey-black bird related to ravens and crows). Animals and plants are always so particular to a place, it’s a delight to learn all of the different terms and species from a different part of the world. This book was about as spring-y as a read could be, but anything you’re reading would be a little more lovely if read outside in the sunshine.
So while you may already be a habitual “a book by the pool/beach” reader in the summertime, may I suggest cracking on with your outdoor reading a little earlier this year? Yes, on a spring day you may find yourself a bit chilly in the wind or the shade, but if you can find a sunny, peaceful spot for just 5 or 10 minutes of reading - it feels like true spring magic.
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