Snow in Summer

Magic is still alive

I stare up at azure blue New Mexico skies with frothy clouds floating across surrounded by the symphony of birds chittering and chattering during what appears to be the bird social hour. Doves hoot to one another with a sweetness that tells of love and loyalty and family. I watch the trees directly in front of me shimmer - leaves lit up by the sun on one side and dark on the other - ever shifting and slipping into their opposite and back again. I listen to the waterfall in the backyard as it tumbles down it’s rocky embankment to land with a light splash in the pond below - leaving tiny rainbows wherever the sun hits the spray. One single pink rose, tiny, timid, and frail blooms right at eye level.

A lazy pale yellow butterfly flits from plant to plant, ever seeking something I will never discover and dragonflies jet across my vision like airplanes on route to their destination with a “don’t be late” streaming in their wake. A tiny swirling breeze flips the fallen leaves around, making tiny little tornados in it’s wake.

But what mesmerizes me the most is this - the lazy, twirling, whirling fluffy white summer “snow” that is a part of the New Mexico landscape. This snow is life - the aptly named cottonwood trees spreading their seeds with fluffballs that spiral and land on the ground looking exactly like fat flakes of snow. It’s impossible for me to stop watching them - with 90 degree weather, the idea of falling snow brings a peaceful smile to my face. It reminds me that magic is fully alive in this world - accessible just by walking outside on a summer’s day.

Sometimes the cottonwood “snow” will build up and form little drifts, catching my eye with the strangeness of snow in summer. Others will land on my arm, tickle my skin, then softly breeze away bumping into everything in their path. A fluffball will catch on the rose petals, cling for a second, then bumble on the breeze to somewhere else. Many are caught in spider webs bringing the webs to life, vivid, white, and full of softness. And at the center of each fluffball is a tiny seed…bouncing around until it finds a good place to land, some soft dirt to burrow in, to await it’s growth cycle.

I have two such little landers in my yard. Two unexpected baby cottonwood trees popped up last year and this year are about 3 feet tall with round shaped leaves. I am thrilled to invite them to stay, to feel the wonder of a thing not planted but choosing to live in my yard. What a miracle and what a gift. Of all the places, these seeds chose me…here…now.

This week I read an essay on enchantment and oh how this rang true for me. When the world is messy, and it is oh so messy right now - enchantment saves me. They are just seeds, yes. They are normal here every year, yes. But today, right now, they are life flitting on the breeze - wafting to their unknown destination. It’s magical if you simply pause and see the oddity of it. I walk the yard to see where these little fluffballs have landed - cacti with fuzzy prickly tines capture clouds of seeds; flowers look stuffed with cotton; tiny snow drifts of cottonwood seeds build up against the adobe wall - soft, fluffy, and almost transparent.

There are a billion lives in this summer “snow”, little piles of potential. And I, for one, choose to be enchanted by the possibilities…

Aprille Xxxo