Microseasons: Spring

We’ve observed the great melt that sent icebergs to the riverbanks as they rose over their beds. This is the time that spiles are plugged into the sides of maples, metal buckets hanging to collect the clear, sweet liquid that will soon be taken to the sugarhouse to boil. The wind bites, moves through any uninsulated crack in the house, yet there’s a change in the air too. It looks like fall at times, muted colors and leftover leaves scattered and swirling as the fresh air gives the feeling of coming change. We're on one end of the sun pendulum, not the other, but there are remarkable similarities. The dirty snow piles soon melt to muddy puddles that prevent trail hikes. There is the onslaught of rain that replaces snow (though flakes do still make an appearance here and there).

The robin and the red wing black bird appear to announce the coming of warmer weather better than any old groundhog ever could. I’d sooner trust the tulips popping up beneath the soft, still cold ground. The aurora is apparently covering us like a blanket nearly every night and I never know it, but it gives me the feeling of celebrity by association, anyway. There is a constant parade of new things bursting into life: first of all, the purple crocus. Next come the yellow daffodils, followed shortly by the pink tulips. Then pop up the wild strawberries flowering in the grass, the bleeding hearts, the fragrant lilacs, the wild violets, the dandelions.

There is the spring/summer cusp that soaks everything in an effervescent green, pouring in through the windows on warm evenings in a neon glow. The peonies and wild daisies bloom ahead of the summer rambling roses, and there’s an invisible threshold crossed where one calendar season blurs into the next.