sagebrush buttercups & spring is come

I am not lithe, I am not nimble as I load myself and my dog into my silver 4x4 truck. The date is March 16th, 2021. A year of viral pandemic, a year of deep loneliness, a year that has left me feeling beyond frayed at the edges, stretched thin, and contracting and expanding. A breathing, heaving thing — my body. My eyes squint, the sun is absurdly bright and it heats up the inside of my truck, and my truck, purrs gently — my silver ally and steed to take me into the steppe, hills, canyons, and mountains. My dog, well, she’s not so content. She hates truck rides and I try to convince her that the destination is worth it, but I do so in vain. She drools, shivers and pants. Its the way she goes. She’ll be happy once we arrive at our spot and she’s free to roam among the sagebrush.

I drive through my tiny town, filled with flatbed trucks and cowboys, working folks, and the odd tourist waiting in line at the popular bakery. It’s still winter, and town is still sleepy. Town has been asleep all year, with dead and dusty streets. Sometimes while I run errands and the wind is really kicking up, it wakes up dust demons in the ally’s and streets, it feels apocalyptic — and I have to remind myself that it is. It’s real. We’re in it. Not a Mad Max fantasy future, not here at least. The way it arrives, the way it plays out, the way we live in it will never meet our expectations, our daydreams or desires that are so influenced by pop culture. The gore in all it’s shapes and form — of this apocalyptic spectacle is a taboo shadow we wish to lie with. We should admit this.

Getting to the outskirts of town takes only but a moment and I am met with deep blue skies and a glorious mountain scene that takes up most of the skyline. After three years to the month of living here, the mountains never bore me, they only always titillate me into ecstatic joy. Sometimes I wish the land would rise up in some human form and make love to me. I imagine that they would come to me with horns of an elk, the face of a wolf, cloven-hooved, with heaving breasts and a cock — and that they would take me somewhere on a hillside. I imagine that like the way Isobel Gowdie took the Devil, that their nature would be as cold as spring water. Or like mountain snowmelt in a swollen creek in the springtime. The ringing singing of the rapids, with shaking alder branches and red osier dogwoods trembling in the wake of endless waves, the song of sparrows in the undergrowth somewhere a doulas squirrel yelling about something, and snap! A dead branch falls and all falls silent.

I am back in my truck and turning onto a dirt road and endless sea of sagebrush before me, snow-capped hills roll along all sides of me. With the ever-present mountains to the northeast of me. I park my truck in a dirt roundabout and near a massive water holding tank that a rancher must of dumped here recently — made of plastic, it has a huge crack in the top.

My dog’s attitude transforms when I let her out. Joy and glee fill her visage and I sigh the kind of relief that any parent would for a child who is no longer under duress. 

I am here to walk, in the sagebrush and in the wind. I am also here to look for something. I am here for a sign. A sign that spring is well and truly here.

I am looking for, Ranunculus glaberrimus also known as the sagebrush buttercup.

This small flower is the rebirth and beginning of everything in the sagebrush steppe, particularly in my locale. When they appear, it means that spring has arrived. It means that maybe, just maybe we’ll get one more light snow, maybe two. 

While the equinox and the moon hold the powers of celestial spring marking, this seemingly innocuous flower is the star that shimmers all hope and optimism that winter is fading and spring, blessed spring has arrived.

The wind is a bit bitter on my cheeks, but the sun warms my back and face — my dog leaps through the sagebrush, sniffing for ground birds and jackrabbits. She’s a pointer, and knows how to flush out any critter that’s hiding. With the exception of coyote.

Coyote we watch and leave alone. 

However, sometimes we dance with them when the time and moon are set just right on the horizon.

My eyes scan the ground for anything that is small, green, and yellow. The sagebrush hum a low wind song and because the wind varies in its spatial occupations — you can hear higher whistles and low rumbles throughout the landscape. Sagebrush have a song and you must show up to be in witness. You must listen deeply. 

Everything has a song.

There! My heart leaps. A singular small yellow flower lies gently in the contour of the dirt, right under a sagebrush. I must get eye to eye with this little creature. So I bend down, knees and thighs in the dirt, and take a closer look. Waxy yellow petals, the leaves, mimic the tips of the sagebrush leaves, they are tri tipped. Tridentata — I lean in for a smell, again, waxy and soft light florals but you must draw very close to get a whiff.

I stand up, dusting the dirt off my carharts. 

It is done. Spring is officially here — and as I meander down the dirt road, I find patches, here and there of these delightful little buttercups. I sit with the sagebrush, I sit with the buttercups. This is my vernal equinox rite. No glitter, no candles, no indoor rites rooted in a fantasy past.

As a witch and in my practice I have tossed out the traditional following of the Wheel of the Year. A term coined in the 1960’s in the wake of Gardnerian Wicca — it’s not as old as you might think.

I follow the sun, the moon, stars, and listen to the land. I find it trite and disconnective to celebrate a witch’s holiday that has it’s roots, basis and influence in a land I have never step foot on. While I have some connections by ancestry, following the Wheel of the Year has never sat right within me. One might find it far more connective, if you’re paying heed to the signs of your own landscape — so many jewels in the dirt waiting to be acknowledged for the power they hold in heralding the seasons.

Sometimes the cross-quarter observation is quiet, especially if you’re a lone witch. Sometimes it’s just you and the sagebrush and a handful of buttercups welcoming in spring.