The crack of a bat on a ball.The scream of an osprey overhead.The red mist around a budding maple.

This is an essay about nothing in particular, but about some of the things that really matter, across the centuries.

It is not about the political ill-will that is tearing our national, regional, and local fabrics. We watch the divisive partisanship that seems to be a permanent intruder in our midst. Then we think about persistence, the subject of this essay.

The will to survive persists and usually triumphs. In March the roadsides, old fields and young woods in Gloucester and Mathews bloom with a welcome, persistent survivor: daffodils. The fields of gold have persisted for decades. The remnants of a once-vibrant commercial flower industry, they are beautiful survivors. They have endured through world wars, cold wars, pandemics, and political upheavals through the past century. And they persist.

Just when it seems the winter of discontent will never end, when March is throwi...