False Spring?

Other years I’d be looking forward to melting snow starting to expose the ground. This year I’m concerned that cold spells and blizzards may damage or kill those who have been suckered into believing winter may be over and start to emerge from dormancy. Will waterfowl head North prematurely, only to be faced with a refreeze and lack of food? I hope not. As is always the (often unacknowledged) case, we live one day at a time and have to play it that way.

early Spring arrivals, February 21, 2017

Photo by J. Harrington

Not quite a decade ago, in 2017, at the beginning of the third week of the month, the Sunrise River pools in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area looked like the picture above. (The gray and white color spots in the center are swans and Canada geese.) So early arrivals of Spring to the North Country are not without precedent. We intend to keep our fingers crossed that the pattern holds and no harm is done.

As a matter of fact, the Ojibwe have a story about the annual battle between winter (Biboon) and spring (Ziigwan). That seems to indicate early or late arrivals of Spring are relatively normal in the natural order of things and life goes on. Perhaps if we spent more time during winter telling stories and sharing legends, we’d have a better sense of what’s normal and what’s not.

Windigo

By Louise Erdrich

For Angela

The Windigo is a flesh-eating, wintry demon with a man buried deep inside of it. In some Chippewa stories, a young girl vanquishes this monster by forcing boiling lard down its throat, thereby releasing the human at the core of ice.

You knew I was coming for you, little one,

when the kettle jumped into the fire.

Towels flapped on the hooks,

and the dog crept off, groaning,

to the deepest part of the woods.

In the hackles of dry brush a thin laughter started up.

Mother scolded the food warm and smooth in the pot

and called you to eat.

But I spoke in the cold trees:

New one, I have come for you, child hide and lie still. 

The sumac pushed sour red cones through the air.

Copper burned in the raw wood.

You saw me drag toward you.

Oh touch me, I murmured, and licked the soles of your feet.

You dug your hands into my pale, melting fur.

I stole you off, a huge thing in my bristling armor.

Steam rolled from my wintry arms, each leaf shivered

from the bushes we passed

until they stood, naked, spread like the cleaned spines of fish.

Then your warm hands hummed over and shoveled themselves full

of the ice and the snow. I would darken and spill

all night running, until at last morning broke the cold earth

and I carried you home,

a river shaking in the sun.

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