A chartreuse spring
& a secret herbal elixir
Spring in the front range, the high desert, the plains comes softly on a breeze and a steady rain. The land turns a soft green and erupts into flowers that spew and flow across the soil. It’s a magical experience to see the earth try on a flamenco dress of petals, sepals and buds.
In the forest, spring comes in a flood. Like after the first snow of the year, the world is transformed in a single day. But instead of white, everything is chartreuse. It’s not the flowers that take center stage, though they are also beautiful, it’s the leaves and the grass and just the green. It’s everywhere. It’s intoxicating.
Colors are associated with emotion. They can also influence emotion. Someone sees red with anger, feels blue with sadness, or green with envy. The best way to describe chartreuse though is ecstasy.
Nothing gives a better hit of dopamine than chartreuse. It is the color of leaf that is fresh out of the womb of the earth, not yet blemished by hand, animal, insect, or weather. Eventually it will deepen to a rich green as it comes to know the ways of the world. Tent caterpillars will nibble its flesh, a storm may tear its green veins. It will muster through the elements before it fades to brown. Yet in that moment of chratreuse, there is hope and possibility and salvation.
I feel chartreuse even more acutely now after a long winter with a toddler. All he wants to do is be outside from the moment breakfast is finished until it’s time for bed. Our favorite things to do right now are picking up sticks and rocks from the gravel driveway, dancing with the trees as the wind blows through their leaves, listening for different bird calls, blowing dandelion seeds into the air, pointing out every color of flower in the garden, and of course pushing around anything that has wheels.
Our days are bathed in that pale yellowy green that filters through the canopy and lands on our faces. I feel a spike of energy as soon as I step outside into its presence. My heart opens, my nerves soften, my eyes eat it in.
