Impressionist April

Some years the seasons are all about the same length here in the Heartland. When we’re lucky like that, then we have time to tire of each one just enough to feel a new awakening when the next one begins. This year is no exception. Winter had a couple of severe cold snaps so that I huddled for days in and out of the house. I love winter, but I was pleasantly surprised a couple of weeks ago when the chorus frogs and peepers brought me out of my dull weather November-to-February blues.

Drab winter colors still dominated the landscape

Drab winter colors still dominated the landscape then, but the high-pitched croaking promised Spring was on the way.

We had another cold spell before temperatures moderated. Over the second week we had two major storm systems, big ol’ commas that slid overhead in such a way that we had hours of rain each time. In the course of six days we had over seven inches of rain. The creeks and rivers all burst out of their banks, with the White River actually rising into major flood stage, only four feet shy of the all time record high in 1913.

As a kid I always enjoyed rainy spring days. If there was enough rain while we served our time on a school day I would climb down from the school bus to make a beeline for my boots and a handful of small plastic boats. Behind our property there was a cow pasture of more than forty hilly acres, usually kept cropped short by a herd of Hereford cattle. On those rainy days there would be little temporary rivulets that formed to drain away the rain. I would go a hundred yards up into the gentle slopes where the tiny waterways began, setting little boats made for a bathtub into the current headed downhill toward a pond covered shore to shore with bright green duckweed. The boats rode the swift current easily, slowing to spin in eddies or to stick their keels on a sandbar. When they ran aground in a shallow spot I would nudge them free with a stick or dump the water in their bilges and set them on their dizzying downhill course again. I thought it great solitary fun where I could marvel at the gurgling water and forget the worries of school for an hour or so.

These days April still has its sensory charms. I live in an area blessed with redbud trees. They are nondescript most of the year, but in an April of moderate temperatures they offer a dazzling treat for the eye. They’re a color all their own, starting magenta but opening to a shade not quite hot pink. They live a long time and spread easily, reminding me of their presence during a two-week display of reassuring color. I see them on rainy days when the other trees present only gray and charcoal-colored bark. They nod along roadsides and around homes in the countryside.

Watching the redbuds bloom always fixes an impression in my mind. That image takes me to my three favorite Impressionist artists Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Claude Monet. The Impressionists came along just as photography began to develop into an art form. Somehow it occurred to them to paint scenes as the eye actually saw them rather than as a camera did. At a distance our eyes do not capture so much detail. There’s an ever so slight blurring, a blending of hues that give more of an impression of color and composition, an atmospheric quality that places me in the scene just as I like to be. 

I don’t know how they did it, but they always seem to have painted the air as well as the light. The Impressionists often painted water, using coarse brush strokes or a palette knife to show a little chop on the surface.

In a gallery I adjust my distance from the canvases, bringing the artist’s work into the near focus he saw when it was painted. Even hanging on a wall it seems as though the leaves move a little and the water is wet. I can tell whether that long ago day was moist or chilly.

So now in every Impressionist April I look forward to the sound of gushing runoff when I open the door in the morning after a rain. I walk out into the unpainted canvas, images a little fuzzy in the distance, but with a soft humid atmosphere. The light is subdued, the mood a little somber, the ground marshy under foot. I can hear the little creek in the distance and see a tiny stream in every little feeder valley. Sometimes little waterfalls of a few inches or even a foot will call with a gurgle and splatter while the bare branches overhead drip steadily. The junipers in their forest green bundles offer a background contrast to the redbuds, and the first green buds and tiny leaves on understory trees and bushes venture out into the restricted light. I mark the contrasts and the many shades of green and try to really notice and enjoy them. It is well that I do, because in ten days’ time the maples and poplars and hickories and weeping willows with all the rest will show new green leaves that hurry to hide the forest floor. Summer is still two months away, but the green and growing things know that they must get ready for the quickening days ahead.

Support Canada Free Press