Will we remember old lessons on journey ahead?

Though barely rising through the layers of winter's dead brown leaves, its meaning was unmistakable. The cluster of five purple petals marked the first wildflower I'd spotted this year during walks along the Iowa River. Clinging to the slope leading out of the river valley, it meant spring really was here.

Pausing, I kneeled before it. The solitude of a nature hike allows one the luxury of satisfying curiosity.

It smelled sweet, though I could not place exactly what like. Not sugary like a confection, not citric as a bite of fruit, but something ... youthful.

It was the scent of spring itself.

• • •

There may be no better words to describe spring than those from a literary work whose opening lines a high school English teacher made me memorize as graduation approached. I can recall them to this day:

"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
"The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
"And bathed every veyne in swich licour
"Of which vertu engendered is the flour ..."

So begins the General Prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," a seminal English work containing some of the best short stories written. My teacher had the class memorize various sections of the book as Chaucer wrote them in Middle English, a language some 700 years old just different enough from Modern English that we have trouble reading it.

A rough translation in 21st century prose:

During April, whose sweet showers pierce March's dryness to the root and bathe every plant's vein with water, by whose power flowers are produced ...

Somehow, the modern version doesn't sound quite as melodic.

• • •

But the beauty of spring hasn't been reduced any the less for it. There is something invigorating as one steps through the first warm day of April: sunshine caressing the cheek and bare arms, the flashes of green bursting through the ground and across the branches, songbirds cheerfully filling in their old friends of tales from the winter's journey south.

In spring, we also seem to lose our heads. It's a time of falling in love, when the soberness and cabin fever of winter must give way to lighter pursuits.

It's a time of beginnings. Farmers sow their fields with corn seed. Buds slowly unwind into leaves. And wars, too, often are launched in late spring - the crops are in, the rains have ended, weeks of warmth are ahead ... yes, for every metaphorical cliché of spring being the start of life, the season has brought much death and sorrow to humanity as well.

What was it that Pete Seeger once sang? "When will they ever learn?"

• • •

Chaucer's tale is about travelers on a pilgrimage to a holy site in England. It's a common enough occurrence at this time of the year with Easter, Passover and Arba'in converging as they do. For safety - it was the Middles Ages, after all - the pilgrims agree to travel together.

To pass the time, they tell one another stories.

Through the various tales, we learn different lessons. Each is as full of symbolism and morality as a spoiled child's Easter basket is stuffed with candy, your understanding of the world fattens with each passage.

It's a delicious book to read.

• • •

I did not pluck the purple cluster of flowers. There was no need to deny someone else from enjoying them. So long as my memory is strong, its simple beauty and pretty scent remain for me to recall.

I believe the diminutive bloom was a phlox, but I've never really taken the time to learn such things. For some reason no one ever asked me to memorize that. Or perhaps a teacher had required it, and it's just been a long time passing.

A lesson forgotten or missed?

Moving up the trail, I pondered such things. The quiet of a nature hike allows one the luxury of such ruminations of past and present. For "Life," Soren Kierkegaard once said, "must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward."

Perhaps by next spring, more lessons of long ago will be recalled - if only so we may move forward rather than repeat cycles.

(originally published April 11, 2004)