May Day: Trillium Hunting

Today was a brilliantly beautiful  start to the month of May- bright sunshine, warm balmy air, a feeling of spring having really truly sprung.  It made me think of trillium hunting with my mom when I was growing up.  Every year on May Day she would pile us into the car and take us out to this special spot in the woods, out away on back roads across the fields from home. I remember we had to pass under the stones of an abandoned train underpass covered in a rainbow of graffiti to get there. At least, that is how I remember it.  Usually it would be after school. Sometimes, if we were lucky, it would fall on a Saturday and we could spend a longer time there.

In the back of the car she would have a picnic packed- sandwiches and carrot sticks and chocolate chip cookies- and we would eat our picnic before we wandered out among trees to search for what we might find.   A quantity of may apples like their own mini forest on the ground;   Jack-in-the-Pulpits in their fresh green jackets; And if we were very lucky (and nearly every year we were!)  a few delicate white trilliums, sometimes painted with pale pink stripes, to mark the start of May.