Signs of Spring
It’s the end of March, and a friend who lives higher up emails, There is still a foot or so of snow outside the door. We know spring is here for a bear has ripped off the bird feeder, the coyotes have been howling close by and a skunk has sprayed the bushes next to our door.
Another friend sighs and says, “I wish it were spring already.”
It is.
Spring is here.
It’s just not yet the time of pastel flowers that we associate with the season. That comes later, especially up here in the north, where spring is a long season of mixing/Memory and desire,/stirring dull roots long before it breeds lilacs out of the dead land.[1]
What to Look For
Signs of spring are everywhere; you just have to know what to look for:
- Snow fleas jumping on the surface of snow weeks before the earth tilts past the equinox.
- Rotting snow banks that no longer offer a pillow of protection if you slide off the road.
- Mud! Its smell as the ground thaws; the way the ground gives underfoot.
- Sap rises from the ground; steam from the sugarhouse.
- We attend the annual rituals of Town Meeting and Sugar-on-Snow.
- Ice out.
- Puddles.
- Rain.
- Geese honk at splashdown, announcing their return.
- A red winged blackbird back at the feeder.
- No more feeder: the bears awake.
- Deer linger, looking for browse to stave off starvation
- And coyotes.
- Spring, like birth, is perilous.
- A possum crosses my headlights.
- Skunk.
- The hens are laying again.
Ebb Tide
Today, the penultimate day of March; snow blankets the pasture, but it’s receding, like an ebb tide.
Today, I’ll bring forsythia branches indoors to force, but I can’t force spring. It will come – not in a straight line, but in it’s stuttering one.
The sun is warm but the wind is chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re a month ahead in the middle of May.
But if you should so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
The wind comes off the frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.[2]
[1] T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
[2] Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time
such an intimate portrait of spring. knowing the land brings peace and burgeoning hope on so many levels. thank u.
Thank you! Quite a different season here than northern California!
Deborah, as I write this my Mom is preparing to enter Paradise. Her eternal “Springtime” is in sight. Thanks for this uplifting message.
Wishing her safe passage and you comfort in her love.
I sit in my bedroom…April 1st…saying rabbits,rabbits,rabbits..like Gilda Radner use to say..on the first day of every month…she said it would bring good luck to you as you related to your family.
My family here is the red Cardinals that came to my feeder yesterday…stockinng up…he knew what was coming April 1st….the sleet and freezing rain won’t last…the sun will come out tomorrow…
How fortunate i am to be able to sit by the fire to keep warm..
Soon my yard will have little ones coming out from the Hemlock hedges singing their songs of gratitude…
I sit inside singing my gratitude for this beautiful community that i live in…for the family of like minded people and the caring and love we have for each other….and our beloved earth….we are all family.
Thanks for this lovely note.