I live in the wild.
I don’t have any grass, nor even daffodils.
My “yard” is a rhododendron thicket with native dogwoods, towering poplars, and all manner of hardwoods and conifers.
And almost nothing is budding yet.
In town, there are streets lined with the most wonderful blooming ornamental trees, yards spilling with bright yellow forsythia and hot pink redbuds.
But in the wild, things are moving slower.
The hillsides in the wild are still mostly bare except for a delightful haze made by the russet buds on the native trees.
These bud casings are beautiful in their own right.
The protective armor containing tender flowers and tiny leaves creates a veil of color that floats along the hillsides like a memory of autumn, just a hint of the red-orange-yellow glory that happened six months ago.
So, two things are happening at once.
There’s a bunch of cultivated stuff blooming and flowering.
And there’s almost nothing in the wild blooming and flowering yet.
Cultivated rhododendron with their massive scarlet and pink flowers will bloom between now and May, but the native rhodos will wait until late June to reveal their white and palest pink blooms.
The wild has a different timing.
Your wild has a different timing.
Like these wild trees, your wild isn’t designed to bud or flower by Mother’s Day or Easter.
Your wild isn’t set by sales or consumerism.
It’s not tuned into “tax season” or “spring break”. It’s not waiting around for a Q1 report or school to let out.
Your wild doesn’t care about any calendar other than an elemental one.
Your wild is as attuned to the position of Earth in space and its relationship with the sun as my thicket of wild rhododendron.
My wild rhodos have never once looked at the cultivated ones blooming and thought, “we’re late!” or “we should do it that way instead”.
So, look at your wild, your own feral budding.
Are there things “taking longer” for you than for your peers? Good.
Are you a certain age where you’re “too old” or “too young” to be doing what you’re doing? Great.
This points to your own wild, your own feral budding.
Your ferality is the access point to your creativity.
When you can separate your wild nature from your cultivated aspects, when you can feel a rhythm, sense an elemental influence, and not care about a date on the calendar, you have tapped a vein of wise timing that’s native to every wild earthling alive.
It’s the vein that tells the native trees to bud and the wood thrush to start flying north from their winter grounds in Mexico.
It’s the vein that awakens the bears and coaxes the hibernating bees to begin buzzing again.
Never late. Never wrong.
When you let your wild be, letting it bud when it’s good and ready, you are also not late.
And neither is your book, your painting, your business launch. Neither is your song, your performance, or your closet makeover. Neither is your collaboration, recipe, or retreat, nor your photography, nor your quilt.
Your wild is feeling and listening for the right timing, just like the rhododendron.
So listen. Feel into it. Give it time.
And when it’s time, bud and bloom with joy and gusto (nature does not procrastinate, either).
love and wild buddies,
xo
kv
