April

When the ground remembers it doesn’t have to be frozen.

The window is open two inches.

That’s enough.

It comes in cold still, this time of year. Morning air in the Treasure Valley doesn’t warm up until it’s ready, and it’s not ready yet. There’s sage in it. There’s something turning over in the soil — that dark, animal smell of ground that’s been frozen and is remembering it doesn’t have to be.

The dogs knew it before I did. They always do.

April here isn’t gentle. It’s provisional. Sun one hour, clouds the next, a wind off the Owyhees that still has winter in it, that reminds you not to get comfortable. The cottonwoods are just beginning — that particular pale green that only exists for about a week before it deepens and becomes ordinary. Down along the Boise River they line up like they’re waiting for something, that new color trembling in the wind, not quite committed yet to being leaves.

You have to catch it.

Someone is burning nearby. Not a wildfire — a pile, somewhere. A field being cleared, maybe. That smoke threads in through the two-inch gap and mixes with the sage and the turned earth and something I can’t name — just April, just this valley between these mountains, waking up again whether anyone is watching or not.

I’m watching.

It doesn’t need me to.

That’s why I keep the window open.

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