RIVER CITY JOURNAL: DOGWOOD TIME IN OZARKS: GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN

There are skiffs of snow all over the hills near Cape Girardeau. In some yards in town there are mounds of the white stuff. What? This has been the mildest winter and warmest spring in recent memory. What's all this talk about snow?

Take a look.

The dogwood is in its glory. Drifts of the white flowers cascade down the hills.

And just in time for Easter too. There is a legend that the cross on which Jesus was crucified was made of dogwood. Since that time, the tree has never grown large enough to make a cross, and its four-section blossoms are stained at the tips with Christ's blood as a perpetual reminder of the single most significant event in the Christian religion.

Dogwood has been a favorite of yours all your life, probably because the trees are so abundant in the hills where you grew up and because they bloom prolifically without interference from handy-dandy gardeners or chemical-laced fertilizers.

And you never have to weed a dogwood patch.

It is the brilliant blossoms, though, that capture the attention and long-lasting admiration of most folks. When the trees are ready to bloom, the blossoms start out yellowish and gradually grow whiter and whiter. Some wild trees even develop a tinge of pink.

The domesticated dogwood trees used as ornamental plantings in yards are gorgeous, but there is something special about the flattened spareness of the limbs of the wild dogwood that grows beneath the trees of the forest. The blossom-laden limbs are forever reaching out for a bit of sunlight as the towering oak, hickory, hackberry and ash begin to form the canopy that will shade the dogwood through the hot summer.

A walk through a hilly forest on a fair day in April when the dogwood is in bloom surely gives you a glimpse of heavenly glory. At least you would like to think you can look forward to eternity with recurring dogwood seasons. After all, it wouldn't be special if the dogwood bloomed all the time.

While touring the hills and valleys of Bollinger, Wayne and Reynolds counties last weekend, you saw plenty of other welcome signs of spring. There was the pair of eagles near the Bollinger-Wayne county line. And the turkey strutting along the edge of the woods. And, in the creek that drains Greenwood Valley, the great blue heron that floats up and glides just beneath the overhanging tree limbs.

The dogwoods are early this year. The sweet william is in its glory, but the wild iris and indigo are still far from blooming.

The visit to the Ozarks also was an opportunity to look for sassafras. You mentioned a few days ago that a story about how this is the season for sassafras tea, the age-old spring tonic, might be in order. Your colleagues -- they are so young -- looked at you blankly. You found plenty of sassafras, but the thick roots were beyond being pulled up, all except for a pencil-thick piece about four inches long. Not enough for a good pot of tea, but plenty for an aromatic reminder of the sugary concoction that always meant spring is here. At last.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.