This, until The Hepatica Bloom

I once wrote a journal entitled "This until the Hepatica Bloom". By "wrote", I mean that I kept a journal with that overlying theme. The Hepatica are the first wildflowers to bloom in our area and since the species love limestone derived soils, we have great colonies of hepatica. It is a wondrously beautiful bloom in it's own right and when you add that to the fact that it blooms in the barren winter woods, it is down right breathtaking when you happen up on a cluster of the medium-sized blue or white blooms protruding from the winter-dead forest debris. Each year, when I venture out into the woods - into known lairs of the hepatica, I know that when I spot the first bloom, that instant is my own personal "first moment of spring". My first day of spring was Tuesday past, March 12. I kept this journal from November 2001 until February 2002, and over that time, instead of looking for wildflowers and ginseng, I ventured far and wide to frozen, winter waterfalls and explored the winter landscapes of the Daniel Boone and Big South Fork National Forests. This was a time of wellness for me - I was building the cabin at Richards Bend, and I knew I'd soon move in (within a year or less). My Son was nine years old, and was such a joy to me (as he still is). Though life was not easy, and I thought I had things to worry about, at least I was healthy and there was no reason to believe I wouldn't live to be an old man. I went on to have a very nice and perhaps one of the best years of my life. My time with Jonny was simply a gift from God. I finished and moved into the cabin at Richards Bend. I backpacked 130 miles of the Sheltowee Trace, and there wasn't a cause in the world for alarm. Oddly though, I recall and I read throughout my personal journal from that year, I had anxieties and concerns that perplexed me and robbed me of the fullest, richest sense of well being I could have had otherwise. The Hepatica of 2013 bloom in the mists of a great struggle for me. I am engaged in a Great and Brutal War - a fight for my very life. My attitudes with regard to my long-term survival swing literally from hour to hour. Sometimes I believe I will beat this. Sadly, other times I doubt I will live to see the Hepatica bloom again. Fact of the matter is, we simply don't know and while I may have fairly good odds at seeing the next generation of Hepatica, my annual seeking of these lovely first blooms of the year will probably end sooner than they should, and within all that means, there is in me a sadness that defies any attempt to relate it in any meaningful fashion. But as my journal teaches me, this is not the first time I have felt this way. Contemplating the Hepatica past… contemplating the Hepatica present and future, I see that my life-maladies from year to year never really change in magnitude nor in the impact they have upon my sense of well being. They only change in physical nature. And that over my lifetime, the things that diminish a good life are constant and never changing. I simply wish I could trade my current troubles for those I had in earlier times. And it seems to me, it ought to be allowed since they seem equally troubling.