The first warm walk

Every spring there is one walk where the season actually changes. Not the first sunny day, which is usually a trick, but the first afternoon when you leave the jacket open and do not regret it an hour later.

This year it was the last Sunday of April. I took the long path along the river, the one that floods every March and stays half-swamp until May. The water was still high and the colour of strong tea. Someone had laid planks across the worst stretch, and someone else had already broken two of them.

Things I noted, in the order I noticed them:

• Birch catkins everywhere, and that faint dusty smell they have.
• A chiffchaff calling its own name from the alders. I never see them. I have stopped trying.
• Wood anemones in the hollow by the fallen oak, exactly where they were last year.
• A heron standing in the shallows, perfectly still, ignoring a dog barking at it from the bank.
• Mud to the ankles on the way back, because I took the short cut I always regret.

At home I wrote the date of the first anemones on the inside of the kitchen cupboard door, under last year’s date. There are six dates there now. The flowers have come within ten days of each other every year, which I find more reassuring than I can easily explain.