Spring is an explosion

When nature stirs

Mar 20, 2025

It’s official—spring has sprung, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere (apologies to anyone currently heading into autumn—your time will come). Days lengthen, the air grows warmer, and winter’s gloom melts quietly away. Throughout history, letter-writers have wrestled to capture the restless spirit of spring, and the blossom of correspondents that follow have done so with wonder, mischief, and occasional exasperation. Some are intoxicated by the season; others find it unsettling—but none can ignore its pull.

Anaïs, Spring is here. I’ve been enjoying it. But in order to enjoy it I had to have you. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been any spring for me. I’ve known other springs, black springs. And when I wrote that exultant letter to Emil, about being filled with the Holy Ghost, etc.—et cetera—I thought to myself how queer it is that we palm it off on the Holy Ghost. You are the Holy Ghost inside me. You make my spring.

Henry Miller
Letter to Anaïs Nin
24th May 1933

—A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953, edited by Gunther Stuhlmann

Yesterday, Sandy and I went to the Zoo. The Roman spring is going to everyone’s head and it has sure done things to the animals. I watched two brown bears making love, and it gave me a turn; the male, with bored rather glazed eyes, mounted the female who snarled, roared and did her best to bite his head off. The bear’s penis, in case you did not know, is tiny; the giraffe’s which was also on exhibit, is absolutely terrifying. I have never, off hand, seen so many private parts displayed at once; it leads one to wonder what the Romans themselves are up to, in this aphrodisiac air.

Martha Gellhorn
Letter to William Walton
28th March 1953

—Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn, edited by Caroline Moorehead

Up here, spring is an explosion. For a week we’ll shiver in a nor’easter, walk out into a cold drizzle and at night reach for an extra comforter; everything seems to stand still, but with a curious feeling of latency; then suddenly, crack, bang, boom, it’s hot, it’s spring, and all the trees have burst into blossom like incendiary bombs. The process that takes at least ten weeks in northern France—first the almond tree at the end of the garden has its pink blossoms in February; then one after another, like the successive acts of a drama, the peaches bloom, the apricots bloom, the plums bloom chalk white, the cherries with a very faint touch of pink, the pears, and finally after the middle of April the apples, in all shades from crimson to alabaster, great mounds of strawberry ice cream in the Norman orchards that last until May—that process here is finished in ten days or two weeks, then the blossoms are gone, the dust is on the grass and we are in the middle of summer. Maybe there is some of that vegetable violence in the American temper. And curiously our slow period of development, of new beauties from week to week, is autumn, when we are getting ready for death.

Malcolm Cowley
Letter Mary Mellon
5th May 1944

—The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1987, edited by Hans Bak

The spring is coming. Yesterday the lambs were dancing, and the birds whistled, the doves cooed all day down at the farm. The world of nature is wonderful in its revivifying spontaneity. But oh God, the world of man—who can bear any more? I can’t bear any more of mankind. One can only lapse. At any rate, the cooing of the doves is very real, and the blithe impertinence of the lambs as they peep round their mothers. They affect me like the Rainbow, as a sign that life will never be destroyed, or turn bad altogether.
I keep hoping now for an intimation of spring in the heart of mankind, new world to come. Do you catch any signs? As soon as I do, I shall come forth. One waits in a strange expectancy. I suppose we have our hour for coming out, like everything else.

D. H. Lawrence
Letter to Dollie Radford
23th February 1917

—The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol.1, edited by James T. Boulton

When I see the green of spring, I think “this is special, this color is sacred to me, because perhaps at the same time my love sees the same color—and perhaps she feels the same inexplicable, indescribable, and mysterious emotions—at this very moment.” I see a flower, and remember the flowers you gave me, silently in our car, in San Juan Coscomatepec. And suddenly, with this memory, the entire world is a flower, offered right from your hand. I see the sky and remember millions of skies over the dearest person in the world. And I think, “this same sky touches the head of my beloved.” Then I send you a kiss, a tender and passionate caress through the passing clouds. Perhaps you’ll see them soon in Veracruz. I’m jealous of these clouds, which perhaps will see you sooner than I do. And the wind—the wind hugs me—and I beg the wind, “hug her for me, make the wind be my embrace, tender and passionate.” I put myself in the wind and the gentle rain, so that they, wind and rain, can hug and kiss you for me.

Doris Dana
Letter to Gabriela Mistral
21st April 1949

—Gabriela Mistral's Letters to Doris Dana, edited by Velma García-Gorena

I feel like a louse, or tick, for not having written sooner in answer to your nice letters, but have been having my spring orgy in the barn, settling arguments among the geese, taking temperatures, replacing young robins fallen from nests, stepping on the edges of hoes and rakes, challenging black flies to fifteen rounds without even attempting to make the weight, and constructing jury-rig incubators that would make Rube Goldberg blush. My life as a gooseherd the past three weeks would be worth setting down, if I had a moment, but there are no moments available around here at this season.

E. B. White
Letter to James Thurber
14th June 1951

—Letters of E. B. White, edited by Martha White

The only consolation is that spring is before us. . . This has been an endless eternal winter. How can Nature remain so remote from ugly man—so blind and deaf to all his horrid ways—and just—calmly and wonderfully—act as though for angels! Will the sun really shine from morning till night again? Will it be warm enough for “us lizards of convalescence” (as Nietzche says) to really bask?

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Ottoline Morrell
8th March 1919

—The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Vol.2, edited by Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott

Spring has finally come, and late spring at that. The rains have stopped and the sunshine is beautiful, almost painfully beautiful so that in the morning you look out and take a quick breath as you do when you are quickly, sharply hurt.

John Steinbeck
Letter to Pascal Covici
16th May 1957

—Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, edited by Robert Wallsten