Some stories of Spring

Yesterday, we watched three sandhill cranes land in a nearby stubble field. This morning we noticed a flock of four cranes flying  toward the marshes surrounding the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area Sunrise River pools. The pools themselves are hosting growing numbers of waterfowl. Before you conclude that Spring has actually arrived in the North Country, let us point out that this afternoon's weather forecast includes several hours of snowfall, continuing well into the night. If anything ever consistently demonstrates the pattern of "two steps forward, one step back," it's Springtime in the North Country.

sandhill cranes in Carlos Avery marshes

Photo by J. Harrington

As we've been writing this, we've also been baking some Irish Soda bread in preparation for St. Patrick's Day on Wednesday. The house smells wonderful. Fortunately, we promised the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law that we'd bake a loaf for them, and we'll bake another loaf later this week for the Better Half [BH] and "himself." (That's me!) If we time it well, the house should smell a bit like a kitchen in "the old country" for the rest of the week, since BH is planning on serving corned beef and cabbage on Wednesday.

Still no sightings of robins, red-winged blackbirds or pussy willows. If we don't get too much snow this afternoon and tonight, tomorrow might be a good day to go poking around for awhile to see what we can see. Or, to enjoy the luck o'the Irish, we can wait until Wednesday.

Unlike objects, two stories can occupy the same space

By Charles Peek

Out along the last curve in the brick walk

the grass has begun to green,

with the freezing cold and coming snow

its certain fate.

The cranes make the same mistake,

fields of red capped heads attest their arrival

just before the worst blizzard of winter

makes it impossible to tell the field from the river.

And we, too, have known these mortal mishaps,

miscalculated our time, found ourselves out of step,

arriving too early, staying on too late,

misjudging the nearness, the vengeance of the storm.

The cranes, the grass, they tell us:

this can go on for millions of years.

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