... From a distance, through the passage in the forest, it looked cheerful and bright, radiating with unusually pure and even yellowness. On approaching, this is an abandoned field, having been neither ploughed nor sown for a long time, and now it is densely overgrown with some sort of low shrubs. Suddenly, the breeze brings over a pleasant bitterly floral aroma. "God, this is winter cress,” - I recall from reading a botanical album some time ago, – “some sort of weed..."

Fresh wind sweeps over the vivid carpet causing the entire field to move playfully with glistening waves rolling towards a wall of forest shaded from the sun, forming a fascinating contrast between dark green and bright yellow. "Like a bowl of gem stones with a malachite rim" – I suddenly thought.
A kite glides high in the sultry June sky. The heat promises a thunderstorm. Over the western side of the horizon, a huge cloud swollen with rain is already forming. At the zenith, the uneven and fast moving edges of the clouds dazzle with molten silver producing an unbearable brightness. The wind picks up and the carpet of winter cress bloom sways wildly as if the plants are performing an exotic dance.

A continuous trilling sound rises from many unseen larks singing passionately. It is as though the whole place - the flowers and the forest and the field, remote from all human habitat - is singing before the thunderstorm. All the sudden, warm grey shapes fall from the sky and hover over the golden-headed plants. Some of the larks hover above the field moving from one flower to another, filling this remote place with their constant song. Others, fluttering their wings rapidly, fly up and hover four or five meters off the ground loudly praising life.

Thunderclouds tower across the sky, some tinted blue-pink as if glowing from within. Over the forest, I notice a narrow window of the blueish sky remaining, from where a broad waterfall of sunlight breaks through and reaches down to the ground flooding the whole fragrant summer meadow with a warm gentle light whilst a blizzard of aspen fluff silently circles around in the heavy electrified air. Then a deafening thunderclap explodes followed by the first large raindrops nosily slashing at the golden bloom of the winter cress. As the downpour arrives, it suddenly feels as if all nature sighs, liberated and relieved, that all the trees, plants, birds and animals welcome the stirring rain falling in sparkling thick streams of water.

Soaking wet, I stand alone in a middle of the misty field that is suddenly silenced as if it is subdued by nature, also silently enjoying this ecstatic sense of happiness of a human being who, once or twice a year, is given the opportunity to see and feel this wonderful turmoil of nature.