Nature gets all puffed up about Spring

The Sunrise River, as it passes through the Carlos Avery marshes, is now open water again. Nearby pools, not yet. Any day now the skies will be full of returning waterfowl, following ice out North. Daytime temperatures are consistently reaching and exceeding 40℉, so ticks will soon be active, if they aren't already. This weekend we close the pages of March and open to April on Monday. Spring has firmly established again a beach head in the North Country.

a tom turkey displaying

Photo by J. Harrington

Most of the snow has melted. Yesterday we noticed a couple of turkeys making their way through the far fields. Soon the toms, and braver jakes, will be displaying to attract hens for breeding. Squirrels are chasing each other around. Goldfinch colors are brightening. Although food supplies are still sparse, local critters seem to agree with the migrants headed North, the season has turned. Any future snowfalls this Spring should offer but a brief interruption to the continuing process of life returning, plants greening and growing, and babes birthing. It's Spring at last.

Birds Again

Jim Harrison, 1937- 2016

A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.
I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they’re roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye
and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

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