The First Breath of Green
I remember sitting on a rusted iron bench in a park in Utrecht, watching an elderly woman struggle to open a thermos of tea. It was that specific week in April when the air finally stops biting and starts to feel like a promise. She didn’t look at the flowers, but she sat in the middle of them, her coat unbuttoned for the first time in months. We didn’t speak, but there was a shared, quiet relief in the way we both leaned into the sun. It is a strange, fragile thing, that first moment when the world decides to wake up. We spend so much of the year bracing ourselves against the cold, keeping our shoulders hunched and our eyes on the pavement, that we almost forget how to be soft. Then, the color returns, and suddenly, the weight we didn’t realize we were carrying just lifts. It isn’t a grand event, just a slow, steady exhale of the earth. What is the first thing you notice when the seasons finally turn?
Rob van der Waal has captured this exact feeling of renewal in his work titled Spring in Goeree. It serves as a beautiful reminder of how the landscape sheds its winter coat to make room for something new. Does this image make you want to step outside and breathe it all in?
