While out on a morning beauty drive along Turkey Peak Road down east of Early, listening to the new Turnpike Troubadours album (which is amazing, by the way) we noticed bunches of purple verbena that like growing in bends of the road. My husband and I discussed several theories as to why these flowers always seem to pop up where there is a turn in the road. It could be they get more shade there, or maybe a tiny bit more rainwater runs off around a bend.
Watching the new spring flowers come up, even in a year that is dry like this one, is one of my favorite things. Part of it is that the idea of resurrection is being played out before my eyes. Something that appeared dead has come back to full life. This is a theme in nature that recurs, over and over. It’s almost like a message, and I’m there for it. The sun rises from the darkness every morning, and a new day is born. Bare winter branches and brown brush burst into blazing colors every year at this time, and then come the flowers. On the morning we drove and saw the purple flowers, around another bend was a nicely kept yard with a white cross in front of it. The cross was draped with a purple cloth, a celebration of the coming Easter Sunday.
It was beautiful to me, the bright purple flowers almost hidden around every bend like sweet surprises, together with the cross bearing the symbol of the resurrection around another. So many times it’s easy to focus on a cross, on the things that take us into the darkness and make trouble along the way. I guess that is only natural. On this planet we have to work every day to stay alive, so we’re probably given to watching the storm clouds so to speak, being aware and trying to be prepared for whatever life might throw at us.
That said, it’s not just a positive thought that around the curves of life, in unexpected ways, lie promises for the future. It’s a physical reality that can be seen and felt. Promises of the future, that what is lost will be regained, that what was dark will be made light, are inside encounters with unexpected beauty and joy in the little places, when the small things in life speak about big concepts, usually without words.
The story of the resurrection is not for the rich and important people in the world. They are too busy flying over it all, rushing to gain more wealth and fame, fighting each other for power and more stuff. A mystery and joy in just being alive, being able to see the new spring flowers, watching a purple cloth flutter in the breeze along the roadside, that it is for anyone who cares to look deeply at the world. To experience a sense of wonder at a simple patch of wildflowers along a back road outside of town is a very great gift, if one can learn to value it. You can find a gift like this around any bend in the road. Like the song says on the Troubadour’s album, “Hold on to the moment like it’s heaven passing through”, because sometimes, maybe it really is!
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com. Comments regarding her columns can be emailed to [email protected].
