Happy Spring

It’s the vernal equinox today. Day-length is changing more rapidly now than it will for another half of a year. Everything else seems to be changing quickly as well. Snow has been banished from most surfaces, leaving a flattened landscape littered with the debris of winter. Chattering flocks of red-winged blackbirds descended on the wetlands at work. Their “kon-ka-reeee” joins with the songs of cardinals, robins, song sparrows, and others as they try to carve out a territory nice enough to entice one or more females to settle down within their sphere of influence.

Echoes of the winter remain. The ghostly corpses of tadpoles lie at the bottom of the muddy inlet that feeds the pond at work, reminders of the January thaw and subsequent refreeze. We haven’t all made it this far, but those of us that have are energized by the increasing amounts of sun and warmth. Chipmunks traded their hypothermic torpor for manic runs through the leaf litter, on the lookout for mating opportunities. Moths slip into the house at night and mourning cloaks, a butterfly species, rise from the driveway when we pass.

For those of us in the northern hemisphere who divide our year into quarters, the vernal equinox is the official start of spring. But every creature is using different criteria to try and perform their life functions at the optimal time. Red maple flowers emerging from their buds, but the more precious leaves will stay tightly bound until the threat of an early spring snow is over. Organisms cannot safely start some processes on the basis of warmth alone. Thus many species have internal calendars just as they have internal clocks. Our absent song birds must leave their wintering grounds early enough to arrive, set up shop, breed, brood, and hatch their offspring in time to raise those hungry mouths on the abundant insects that are coming.

Non-humans don’t know the calendar date, but it seems to me they “know” the time of year in a more full-bodied way than we do. We have relatively weak seasonal responses. Our energy lifts, but we don’t enlarge our reproductive organs like many birds. The mild-mannered robins that flocked all winter have grown testy. They sing long, warbling songs as they perch bold and red in bare branches. The songs are announcement and challenge, and it’s not uncommon to see males going at each other with fluttering wings. They’re trying to establish their territory before the females show up. There’s plenty more changes on the way.

There are cracks in the icy armor of winter. I've seen them plunge deep into a frozen pond, or expose the gray asphalt of a parking lot. The higher landscapes are still snowbound. In the valley, Gorgeous City lies exposed, its remaining snow confined to piles along edges. Ornamental flowers break through to raise pert little buds to the sky. Rainclouds lurk on the horizon, but for now birds clatter and sing among the barren branches.

Early morning glistens with ice, but as the day progresses the snow cover sags under the warming sun. It’s maple season, the time of year that sap rises up the maple trees and people are busy tapping into the sweet bounty.

We allowed a neighbor to tap our trees the first year we lived on the land. I regretted it when as he drove around during the mud season in an ATV, compacting the soil. Fortunately this was in a part of the forest with few spring wildflowers. Still, there are plenty of maples in this region which grew up in the open, in old pastures or as borders, while our maple trees have had to compete for resources and therefore are less productive.

Those of us that have the luxury of not living hand-to-mouth have the opportunity to cultivate relationships with the nonhuman world not based on economics. I want to be able to appreciate the forest for its own sake, not for what it provides people. So while I put a lot of energy into gardening on previously cultivated land, it’s hard for me to justify wild harvest. The natural world is under siege from all sides. I don’t want to be a force of destruction in the place I love so much, or to take more than I give back. Since that first year, the maples in our forest have kept their sugars to make leaves, flowers, and samaras, feeding fungi, insects, birds and rodents.