Spring came late this year and all the true signs are out together - Bradford pear trees, daffodils and crocus have to share the stage this time. It's early April and the girls want to go on a nature walk. Although we live in a neighborhood, we’re at the end of a cul-de-sac on a fair, triangle-shaped piece of land. It’s mostly scrubby hardwoods, with a nice stretch of pines, making in the winter what my movie-loving mom refers to as “Dr. Zhivago” woods.

Today, we find the usual moss and lichens, and due to the recent rains, a spate of mushrooms. The moss is thick like shag carpet, deep emerald green. The hardwoods are beginning to show some green, and I can see my next door neighbor’s house through the tree trunks. In summer, their ivory house disappears behind the tree cover. A crow flies overhead. We have other birds, mostly cardinals. The hawks and wild turkeys make certain we are safely indoors before they show their beaks. There is a little road that leads to the back of our property, where we can view the farm behind our house. We take this walk most often in late fall through late spring. The vines and brush grow too thick in summer to make it past the most well-travelled areas.

My girls have known the woods since they were born. My first baby was a summer baby and being new to the mothering business, I fretted over getting my baby to sleep. (I know, the things you worry about. But she was brand-new and perfect and I wanted to be perfect.) When the days cooled off in mid-October, I began taking her for walks in the piney woods to soothe her before her nap. I held this feather-light package in my arms and strolled under the trees, stepping over fallen limbs and snapping spiny pine arms that reached out at baby level. On these afternoons, Laura would fall asleep in my arms, and I would carry her inside and lay her ever so carefully in her crib and back away ever so quietly into my sanctuary downstairs.

I continued these walks on bright days through the winter and spring, observing the changes in my woods. The woods stayed pretty much the same until one May day, I found the most unusual flower, a pink bulbous shape springing from broad, slightly fuzzy green leaves. I blinked to make sure I was seeing this correctly. This exotic flower belonged in a hothouse, not my scruffy woods. By chance, a botanically knowledgeable friend came to see me not long after and informed me that I truly had something special in the woods: pink lady’s slipper orchids. She had seen yellow ones, she said, but the pink ones were considered very rare. Well, a quick Internet search proved that they weren’t all that rare, indeed I found photos of entire bogs of pink wild orchids, but they are precious and should be treated as such. They require just the right alchemy of soil, light and a certain fungi found in decaying pine trees to thrive.

Now that I know what to look for, in late March and early April, I train my eyes for the shoots of the lady’s slipper orchids. Just before Mother’s Day come the blooms. The girls and I walk through the woods together to search for the orchids, no more babes in arms, but explorers searching for treasure under the trees.

 © 2010, Lucy Mercer.