Trials and Trillium

It’s always painful to leave Montana, even under a spring snowstorm that slickened the interstate with a wash of cold gurry, a crystalline mix of sand and salt and ice that froze in a dark rime on the truck, stalactites on the fenders, pinwheels on the lug nuts.

But what I saw were sandhill cranes in the pale sky, antelope and mule deer in the whitened fields, streamers of cloud trailing from the gleaming peaks of the Crazies.

Five days later, having successfully navigated the hazards of Bad Route Road (Montana), Motley (Minnesota), and the 8614-foot long Mackinac Bridge (Michigan), I found the hills of Vermont newly green.

Bloodroot bloomed along the brook and, beneath the beeches, a red trillium.