The river is full; gorgeous with spring. I don’t fancy Canadian geese, but even my hard heart is made tender by the sight of ten goslings in a neat row paddling behind their mother goose, flanked by their conscientious father.

Human paddlers are out, too, in brightly colored kayaks and canoes. I savor the sights of the river, here in Narrowsburg and in the city too. The hard winter has repaid us with a full and brimming spring. From my screened porch in the flats, I watch as waves of yellow tree pollen blow across the yard like powder.

Our little pool collects the detritus of its companion maple tree and makes the filter work overtime, but I welcome the chore of skimming as my debt for the tree’s shady beauty. Each sign of nature’s wealth brings a task, but if we are in balance, one never overtakes the other. The trick is to be open to her charms while you are tending to her needs.

This reminds me of child-rearing, or of most human endeavors, for that matter. A neighbor rues the leaves our newly planted trees will scatter on his property. He is dubious as I suggest they will be pretty to look at, with their red buds in spring and silver bark in winter. He hasn’t the time to enjoy them, he says.

I know what he means. I spent 18 hours driving back and forth to Manhattan this week alone. But I made sure to take the prettiest route on daylight trips, and my stereo system kept up with the jazzy rhythms of the changing scenery.

A little tending goes a long way, in nature and relationships. Raking away the layer of leaf mulch from my little herb garden, I am rewarded with a fresh green bed of lemon balm. The rake bruises its leaves just enough to send a heady fragrance into the morning air. 

This week, my daughter and I played hooky mid-week to take a day-trip to Connecticut. We rode the Essex steam train and took a riverboat ride on the Connecticut River. There was no other reason for this trip than to be together, “oohing” at the pretty New England cottages and gardens in Essex and “aahing” at the landscaped beauty of the wide and winding river valley. On the bus ride home, the weight of her head in my lap was a welcome reward for the expense of time.

In the city, bicycling on the new Hudson River Park path is a fresh-air experience in a city overloaded with internal combustion. But even the pleasures of biking are not without penance. A recent outing found me cornered by the flashing lights and siren of a city police force dedicated to the new revenue-enhancement methods of our bottom-line conscious mayor. They wanted to give me a ticket for riding the wrong way on Hudson Street. I reminded them that riding the wrong way was the only safe way in New York City. That would let me get the license plate of the cabbie who ran me down, at least. Unimpressed by my fantasy logic, they let me off with a stern warning after reducing me to tears of frustration as messengers sped by, unhelmeted, all around us. 

Now I heed their warnings as I navigate my way to the relative freedom of the narrow bike path that meanders by the Hudson River. And I am reminded that joy is always tempered by responsibility.