It’s been happening for some time now, this slow and day-lengthening trek across the sky. And as though it happened overnight, the sun is bidding this part of the world farewell later each day and from a different place considerably farther west than it did just a few weeks ago. Late-afternoon shadows are once again shortening as it bathes everything in the landscape with its light from a decidedly different angle, and everything is hushed in anticipation of the onset of spring.
New, yet pleasantly familiar, birdsong fills the air at times when temperatures are not so cold as to drive the feathered creatures deep into the boughs of pine trees and thickets. And the songs are livelier, more vibrant, as though urging spring on, cajoling it into wiping the slate clean of winter once and for all.
This is the dirty snow season, when mud is king, and when soil particles hang in midair before falling during the melting process back to the earth. There isn’t much to look at yet other than this defilement of what was once pristine and pure, and of what, not that long ago, was the norm. What snows fall now is heavy with moisture, as even the clouds await the signal to drop their bounty as the rain that will be the final ingredient necessary to the new burgeoning of life.
Skunks are on the move, as is evidenced by their pungency on the wind. Deer step livelier, and raccoons roam in ever-widening circles in search of some mischief to get into on someone’s back porch in the wee hours of the morning. And in spots where the ice has finally parted, ducks have once again moved in to claim a bit of water before night-time temperatures put an end to the treat, but only for a little while longer now.
Is it just me, or do others feel this restlessness as we all teeter together on the cusp of spring in southern Maine? I sometimes wonder what it’s like to live where the seasons aren’t so clearly delineated, so distinctly separate. Would I notice the shift, however imperceptible, as the Earth moves from dormancy to vibrancy? For all growing things must rest, recharge their energy supplies, regroup in order to continue growing. Having spent my whole life here where the landscape morphs from green to white and back to green again each year without fail and where the seasonal indicators are unmistakable, would I miss the resurgence elsewhere in places where it never snows or the ground never freezes? Are the wild creatures of the woods as energetic in such places as they forage about, and is the birdsong as jubilant in places where ”“ as Gershwin put it ”“ the livin’ is easy?
I like to think that the collective enthusiasm in the northern reaches increases exponentially as each day swells with more time and the sun lingers longer in the southern sky. I’d almost go so far as to believe that the raccoon that greeted me on my porch last night around midnight was actually as happy to see me as I was him, or her, and that the large hawk that glides along the pond’s edge each morning is feeling its oats as much as it ever will again this year.
In a place governed by seasons, the spaces between each is a lull, a layover, a time of waiting, of anticipation, spring being the most portentous of the lot. The change from summer to fall brings with it a certain measure of pathos for what is lost and a sense of gloom for what lies ahead. But spring? That’s a different thing altogether, for it is the time of year when the pathos and gloom are behind us again, as nature turns another page in her coloring book and searches through her box of crayons for her brightest greens.
— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at rachell1950@yahoo.com.
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