New Growth

A story in three panoramas

Yesterday morning, I went for a drizzly hike at Rowe Woods with Scout and we took the Lookout Trail  which goes around a big open area.  Over the last few months, I have seen some major changes in that field.  This first photo is from a frosty morning about two years ago in late Autumn and it is full of growth.

While it looks vibrant and full, some of it I believe was non-native growth and the nature center has been trying to work on getting more native growth to take root around their properties.  Well, in December of last year, here is what the same area looked like.

Same area but vastly different.  CNC had performed a controlled burn of the area.  The full growth is gone and all that is left is a blackened empty field.  I remember walking by there that morning and it just felt blah.  I wrote about it here.

As I shared above, Scout and I hiked the same trail this morning and here’s how it looks today as we are seeing the signs of Spring starting to emerge.

Yes it was still a grey, cloudy morning, but look at all the green growth starting to emerge!  If you look closely, you can still see the blackened stems from plants and you can still see some of the burnt ground.  But new life is emerging.  The photo actually doesn’t do justice to the vibrance of the green that was growing there.

A moment like this gives me hope.  It is easy to get stuck in a single moment where it seems that hope is lost and it feels like that which we love and treasured feels like it has been burned away.  But something new can emerge.  It may not happen overnight or in the span of a few days or a few years.  But it can emerge.

So even on a grey, drizzly, muddy morning, it was a space of hope. It gives me a visual of what Paul shares in Romans 5 about how suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And, he says, “hope does not disappoint.”