Songwriters observe life and collect ideas. The beauty is when they turn despair into hope.
In May 2009, the Jesusita Fire torched over 8,000 acres in Santa Barbara, California. Nature's battle to survive and fight back provided Kenny Loggins the inspiration for writing this song. He took a bike ride through the same charred land in August of 2010 and cried as he rode through the devastation. In early spring of 2011, he finally saw hope in the scorched earth. He could smell new sage just beginning to return. He saw plant life trying to force its way back. He whispered to himself, "I guess it's going to take another spring."
Loggins wrote in his blog for the band's website: "I recognized how long it was taking for nature to come back from this destruction, but also, paradoxically how quickly and tenaciously life wants to rebuild, to send out it's shoots of rebirth, of the promise of a coming spring. I was immediately struck by an inner promise, of the awareness that my own personal spring was only one more season away. It was a message of hope for a heart still in repair, even after all the seasons."
In Georgia Middleman's Songfacts interview she was asked to the reflect on idea behind the song. "That was Kenny's idea," she replied. "He lives in Santa Barbara and they had some wildfires. He was bike riding one day and he said all the plants and the trees, the bushes, they were charred and he was riding through black. He stopped his bike and looked down, and out of one of the bushes there were green sprigs coming out of the black, charred branches. And he went, 'Oh my God, it's amazing how much nature wants to renew itself. And it will.' He said, 'It'll probably take another spring, but we're going to get the wildlife back, we're going to get these trees back. He said, 'It's kind of like life. Nature wants to renew itself, people want to renew themselves.' He came to us with the idea of, 'it will probably take another spring,' and we wrote it as an analogy to opening yourself back up to life after you feel like you've died."
Few instruments capture the mournful sound of a lonesome whippoorwill like the dobro. The dobro's first note, struck in the intro at the :09 mark, pays homage to nature's loss. It represents the sounds of wildlife and nature, the inspiration for this song.
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