I want to stay here for a few days. I want to plant myself in a grove of trees and watch them bloom. I want to fully experience every moment of the beauty, the change. I want to watch them as they grow, and as they blow away on the wind.

The anticipation of the wonderland that is to come, the excitement of it all, swirls around inside of me and mixes with the knowledge that this is fleeting.

We don’t have long. Several short days, a week perhaps. And if a powerful storm comes, even less.

This is where I feel the truest, most incarnate, sense of impermanence.

As I stand under the first blossoms of the youngest trees, aware that soon there will be an explosive moment, a gloriously full bloom, and then all of the flowers will fall or float away, my heart is overcome with both joy and sadness. It is overflowing with both hope and grief. It is, all at once, both full and empty.

I have a desperate sense of urgency, to breathe in the beauty, to sigh out the sorrow, to live.

We don’t have long.