Pause to welcome the coming of Spring

Winter was late in arriving this year, but it made up for its tardiness by lingering longer than is often the case. Most conspicuously, it made a liar out of famed groundhog prognosticator Punxatawney Phil, who allegedly failed to see his shadow on February 2nd, thus ensuring an early spring. As the saying goes... "Not!"

But now at last it seems that spring is finally in the air. That air seems softer, moister, and is graced with the song of birds: both the winter birds that have weathered the cold and storms with us, such as the cardinals, chickadees, and downy woodpeckers, and the newer arrivals, such as American robins, who have returned from wherever they take shelter from winter's cold.

It used to be said that robins migrated south, to return again in the spring; more recently, studies have revealed that our local robins, at least, often seek shelter in wetland thickets, where decaying marsh vegetation moderates the ambient temperature, and clumps of brush break the wind. Another good reason these wetlands should be preserved.

Other migrants are on the move, too: although many of the geese we see in this area are residents, meandering from pond to lake to farm field, also visible -- or audible -- are high-flying V's of migratory geese. The great conservationist Aldo Leopold considered these the surest sign of spring, writing, in A Sand County Almanac:

"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence… But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges."

"A March morning," he asserts, "is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese. I once knew an educated lady, banded by Phi Beta Kappa, who told me that she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education," asked the man known to his loyal graduate students as "The Professor," "possibly a process of trading awareness for something of lesser worth?"

That question resounds through the decades since it was penned, and may well prove fodder for another column. But for now, it is enough to fling open the windows, step out through the door, and open our awareness to the changing season: winter into spring, the wheel of the year turning from the season of darkness, rest, inwardness, and even, yes, death and decay, toward the season of unfolding, opening, blossoming, growth -- rebirth and burgeoning life.

For all our scientific knowledge, the process by which a bulb sends out a shoot that pushes through the earth to become a crocus, daffodil, or tulip, a tree-bud contains the complete essence of the coming season's growth of branch, leaf, and flower, or a seed unfolds to become an herbaceous plant, shrub, or tree, is still something which smacks of mystery and wonder.

Just as mysterious and wonderful are the guidance systems that steer flocks of neo-tropical migrants, our beloved summer songbirds, from their winter haunts in Central and South America to grace our woods and fields, our backyards and even city parks. They are already beginning their journey, and the next month or two will see a veritable explosion of color and birdsong.

The end of winter and the coming of spring may not have quite the impact on us climate-controlled and industrially-fed urbanites and suburbanites that it did on earlier agriculturalists, nomadic herders, or hunter-gatherers. But the tides of spring still flow in all of our blood, if we could but shut off the flood of external stimuli -- traffic, radio, TV, CDs and DVDs, and the internet, among other sources -- that constantly bombard us, quiet the racing of our minds, and open our windows and our senses to the turn of the seasons.

No matter the stresses and pressures of our workaday lives, let's each take a moment, sometime this week, to go outside, stand quietly on the good earth, close our eyes, open our ears and nostrils, and breathe deeply of the essence of spring. I don't doubt that we'll be the better for it.

Mother Nature's Valentine gift

After an unnaturally warm December and (most of) January, Winter has finally moved into the north-central region of Maryland (and many other places too, of course). A slow-moving coastal storm that began Monday evening and continued through Wednesday morning has dropped between five and six inches of mixed sleet, snow, and freezing rain -- mostly sleet -- on us.

Partial melting and compaction over the last two days has further compressed this into a layer of solid, white ice. It's really quite impressive, actually, as well as quite beautiful: I'm able to walk on top of it without sinking in, something that's rarely happened since I topped ??? lbs (what, did you think I was going to 'fess up?) some years ago, and the ice crystals sparkle with a diamond-like efect. It looks much like the top layer of a glacier; in fact, the whole effect is rather glacial-looking: I keep expecting a miniature mammoth to pop over a liliputian rise in the icy landscape!

But please don't get the idea I'm complaining. A half-dozen inches is nothing compared to the many feet they're digging out from, up in northern New York State, for instance, and the teens and twenties we're dealing with is balmy compared to, say, Minnesota. In fact, I'm kind of enjoying this. I had begun to fear we wouldn't really have a Winter, this year -- and I'm grateful to Mother Nature for thus ensuring that we really will appreciate Spring when it arrives!