THE SQUIRREL SPRING Lowell L. Klessig April 18, 1985 New Hopestead Just there lounges a little boy. He discovered the pasque flowers a few minutes ago, and now sits in wonderment beside the old stump of a generation ago. The leaves are warm, insulating the cool ground beneath. For summer arrived last night, more than two months ahead of schedule. The auburn blond hair offers little protection to the tender scalp and already the first imprint of a sunburn shows. But he knows not that delayed reaction and so is not worried. Instead, he concentrates on the leaves about him and what he might find under those leaves. He is looking for acorns. Like the squirrels in the woods around him, he is searching for those good nuts – fertile nuts, which are just now breaking their shell, expanding with moisture and the new growth of another generation. The dark winter worn shell is cracked, exposing the reddish-yellow emerging therein. For some, the tap root is already emerging. He holds up his hand – a signal to me that he has found a nut – an acorn of optimism. I walk over with the pail, and he makes two deposits. The acorn takes its place with the others already in the pail, the smile takes its place with those already in my heart. I walk back over to another grand oak, and with a little stick scratch under the leaves. I find a dozen or so more in each area, and it would be faster for sure to gather them alone. But then, he is the reason that the gathering is done. These will be his trees, and he will someday proudly say, “I gathered these acorns with my dad, and we planted them on a hot day in April of 1985. And now look at this handsome red oak, that grew from one of those little acorns I found under a leaf, beside an old stump, on the east slope of the west ridge of the north forty. And that's how I learned what spring is all about, planting acorns with my dad, like he had with his grandfather. Acting like a squirrel, thinking of the future, celebrating a nut.”