Winter/Spring

The Days of March

The snow now lies in patches around the house. Back here in the woods, we hold on to our winters. But the days are getting a bit longer and in a few weeks the wild geese will be gathering in the skies to prepare for the long trip north. Oh, how I love to hear that noisy honking over my head. It is at moments like these that I feel truly alive and a part of the great natural cycle of life and of the workings of the universe. I wish them well and earnestly hope that I am here to witness their return in the fall.

I walk on the bare swaths of ground around the property today and look for that inevitable and undeniable sign of an awaking earth the tender shoots of the crocus. I saw none. But Helen, my neighbor, tells me that they are poking up around her cabin. Moles love their succulent roots and may have helped themselves to what remained of mine. I'm glad the moles are stirring, though. In their subterranean meandering, they can now look forward to a more bountiful season of quickening tubers and rootstocks despite the gardener's complaints of their depredations.

I heard the early beeping of the woodcock yesterday as he was performing his spring dance. During mating season, he suddenly flies up in the air a distance of twenty feet or more and then lands back again on the same spot, emitting curious beeplike sounds. I believe he might be informing me that it's time that the world had a few more woodcocks. As you may know, the cocker spaniel was trained to hunt these little fellows. I'm glad this little pastime is no longer pursued.

Spring

Another spring is waiting in the wings, but, like some erotic dancer, teases us before her entrance, revealing herself a little bit at a time. New bird calls are being heard for the first time this year and, to me, sound like the opening notes of some sylvan oratorio. The eastern towhee descanting to everyone to "drink your tea" and the brilliant cardinal beginning shriek his territorial claims in a tenor's warning to every other winged occupant in the woods. Even the single baritone beep of the woodcock echoes through the pines whose needles glow and respond to the quickening touch of this long-awaited season. The earth itself is stirring once again. Through the soil, still oozy from the vast burden of melted snow that has seeped through its surface and still saturates its pores, tiny green sprouts are beginning to appear everywhere in places that were barren only a few days ago. I look for the bright greens of resuscitated mosses in the damp crevices of a soil that has been covered all winter with the decaying debris of the fall. There they are, half hidden under a oak leaf or a rotting pine branch, shades of emerald nourished by the recent flood of moisture and eagerly seeking the light of a lengthening day. Amidst all this awakening, the mourning doves murmur the inconsolable altos of their loves. And most wonderful of all, I am around to see it one more time.

"A green thought in a green shade."

Thinking of the beginning of spring and the local wildflowers again. Thoughts, also, of the garden-fresh vegetables we used to grow in the summer. Memories of long ago. Yes, I remember the green days when we had a garden that reached right down to the river bank. We grew everything, including black beans, peanuts, citron melon and acorn squash. There I am in my jungle hat and bush pants, Jean in her shorts, bending over the tomato plants, gathering up an armload of the red fruit of our vines before they crack in the blazing summer sun. Turtles, we soon learned, also love tomatoes, and we had one particular guy who was gorging himself every day on our wonderful bounty.

Jean, who cared deeply about all living things, great and small, picked this fellow up, put him in a cardboard box and took him down the road to someone with a tomato farm. When she got there, she took him from the box and with a gentle shove pushed him into the tomato rows. "There, help yourself, " she said. "This man has so many tomatoes, he won't care if you take a bite out of one or two. And besides, they're so much better than ours!"

Mais oui. Je m'en souviens bien les jours d'autrefois