I want to believe the trillium will bloom. Every spring, in a small grove of mixed conifer, the place where we buried Katie dog, they rise. And yet. There is still so much snow. A miracle of snow. Waist deep and almost April. Will it all really melt and turn this monochromatic landscape lush again?
The sun is promising spring today. As is the drip I hear from trees and roof. The ice in the driveway is turning to slush. But it's only mid-March, and I know the weather in these Salmon River Mountains. It's got a snow or two left. There's still north in that wind. This is Fool's Spring.
And I've been fooled. A few years back, mid-April and giddy with a week of sun, I had the studded tires taken off our Toyota Matrix, then drove Highway 95 from McCall to Moscow. If you've ever driven that stretch and know the climb 95 makes from the town of Whitebird to where it begins to descend into Grangeville, you know steep. It was snowing hard. Everything, sky, road, slope, another shade of gray. Almost at the top, I lost traction, started sliding backward, and didn't stop until the tires found the gravel of the shoulder. A semi rambled past, the chained tires cackling. Backsliding bedamned, I still lean toward optimism.
And it seems I'm not alone.
Fellow townsfolk were shedding more than hats, coats, and snow tires this week. We've also pocketed our masks. Now smiles bloom where before was a paper rectangle of ambiguity. Last night, at a gathering of nearly 100 in our small community, only five wore masks. I wore lipstick. It was the first time some of us had gathered in almost two years. We'd only just heard of COVID back then. No one knew the right thing to do, so we all brought our own forks, then huddled into a conversation about what may be next. The only thing that felt risky was facing the coming storm alone.
"Verve" was the color of lipstick I wore. Plum-red. Mauve-ish. Perhaps even a little foolish. But it felt good to share a smile. I even bussed the cheek of a friend and left a mark. As if proof of my faith. But it neither proved nor promised anything. I reached in my pocket for a tissue and found my mask instead. I touched it and felt the wariness the last two years bred. I reached to wipe away the kiss, but my friend was gone. I felt as if I had trespassed. I took my chair and put my hands in my pockets.
I looked out the window toward the lake I knew was there. Fog and snow had curtained the landscape until all that remained was white. "Hard to believe there is an enormous lake out there," I said to the table, and the other guests nodded. It's the nature of doubt that makes us trust in only what we can see. And then, as happens here, a wing of blue swept the fog away, and sun came pouring in. Suddenly, lake. As if the mere noticing of uncertainty could restore faith.
Fifty years of mountain living should make me a believer. I should scoff at the snow and know that despite what I see at the moment, the season will change, and the snow tires I'd left on will seem foolish. But perhaps it is precisely that which threatens my belief. The last two years have offered an unpredictability I have no practice in, making me doubt what I think I know. Distrust my judgment. Made me don the mask not for the protection it offers but for the uncertainty it conceals.
Perhaps I need to see the trillium for the same reasons we have all been so eager to shed the masks and see one another's faces. We want to know for sure that change is coming. That living will get easier. That perhaps we can slide into summer with the same carefree bliss as summers before. But if the seasons have taught us nothing else, they have taught us faith. The trillium will bloom. I'll wear the mask a little longer, but I'll keep the lipstick in my pocket. ♦
CMarie Fuhrman is the author of Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems (Floodgate 2020) and co-editor of Native Voices (Tupelo 2019). Fuhrman is also the director of the Elk Rivers Writers Workshop and resides in the mountains of West Central Idaho.
