Who was that masked daffodil-planter?
PLAINFIELD
I DON'T KNOW whether it happened under a moonlit sky or in that time of twilight when even a moving person can seem to be only a shadow. But I do know that sometime during the fall of 2004, somebody -- or more than one somebody -- set out on a secret mission. Working under cover of darkness, the lone phantom or the conspirators managed to slip in and out of the fields and yards along the Mohawk Trail, a road that follows the twists and turns of the Deerfield River as it winds through tiny hilltowns here in Western Massachusetts.
In the spring of 2005, the mission was apparent; for scattered throughout the wide fields of new, dazzling-green grass and along the roadside in Charlemont and Shelburne Falls were hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of daffodils. Randomly spaced in clumps of five or 10, some of delicate yellow, some blazing like the sun, they bobbed their heads and swayed in the spring breeze.
At the local newspapers, a rush of letters to the editor extolled the random act of beauty. Who could have done it? Speculation must have been rife in the little cafés of Shelburne Falls and the narrow aisles of Avery's General Store in Charlemont. Everyone agreed that the daffodils brought beauty to the roadside; after a seemingly endless winter, we are all truly starved for color. But it was the secrecy, the surprise of it, that turned it into a story.
Whenever I was in Shelburne Falls, I did what I suppose those who live there did every day -- I scrutinized each face. The woman pushing a baby in a stroller, that young guy with frayed bell-bottoms and wild dreadlocks, those two old men sipping coffee -- I imagined each one with a flashlight, pockets lumpy with daffodil bulbs, softly clicking the door shut on an idling car. Then into the deep grass soaked with dew, the trowel slicing the dank-smelling earth, a twist of the hand to set the papery bulb and a tap of the foot to tamp it down. I saw each person duck as cones of light from approaching cars panned the field and disappeared, heard the whispers, chuckles, the labored breath, and always the soft lap of the river. Every single person old enough to have some measure of independence seemed a possibility.
Remember those fairy tales in which a prince or a princess would don a disguise and walk among the people? I began to think of the secret sharer of daffodils in such a way. But I no longer wanted to know who it was.
It was more important for me to believe that we all have a streak of royalty, the capacity to be generous, to bring beauty to others, to show kindnesses not just to our families and friends but to those we don't even know. I didn't want to know because I was -- as I think most of us are -- starved not just for color but for the belief that we can tap into our better selves. In a time when ostentation and extravagance pass for substance, when what we own or what we buy passes for who we are, when spin passes for truth and bluster passes for action, a simple flower, planted in kindness and secrecy, speaks. It tells us to give of ourselves.
Last weekend when my husband, Rich, and I drove along The Trail, we saw even more daffodils. These new, evenly-spaced bunches were probably planted in broad daylight by homeowners who picked up the idea and ran with it. ''Do they come up every year?" Rich wanted to know. ''They're very hardy," I told him, reminding him of places we have seen them growing by old foundations, outlasting the hand that planted them and the house they adorned. ''They come up forever, as far as I know."
Maybe next year -- every year -- there will be more. My mind fills in the gaps and I imagine this: I crest the top of the long hill up from Greenfield, sweep around a turn, and in one breathtaking moment see them, just as the poet Wordsworth did 200 years ago in his beloved Lake Country in England; a curving line, whole fields of them, golden and dancing, mile after mile, ''continuous as the stars." Plant that image -- of what we could become -- in your secret heart. And it will come up -- as far as I know -- forever.
Mary E. Potter is a freelance writer. 
