We Are Not Going Back
My littlest girl stirred late last night. Just a minor fuss, a pouty lip and a tiny toss. Enough to wake us up however, enough to get me to blink the sleep out of my eyes, to look outside and notice the snow falling thick in the moonlight. Yes, it’s still snowing on and off here in the hills of Vermont. The winter has been long, cold, proper. The daffodils are beginning to sprout, the crocuses are already on the lawn, and the foxes and hawks are out in force. Despite this, despite all these sure signs of spring, we received a few inches of snow last night. No matter. The good green pattern—life—is on the move now and it cannot be deterred.
Nor can we.
Take a walk from my home down the dirt road to the old village below and there you will see a lake. Patches of ice have begun to break around the edges and dot the middle—little windows into the cold lack-light of the lake. When this begins, there is no turning back. The mercury can plummet below freezing, the snow can fall with a fury, it can sleet and spit sideways but the truth is that lake will not freeze further. The ice will not reform. There will be no ice skating and any more angling this year will happen from the shore. Indeed, if you took that walk down to the lake with me today you would have spied a young man with more pluck then sense casting his rod. I mock him but let us be honest: he had the right idea and, in truth, I am grateful for him.
One cannot see a young man defiantly fishing here in our Fool’s Spring and not feel a sense of unbridled optimism. Like the robins in the field or the snowdrops in the yard, he is a good herald of the green things to come. The snow was a setback but the young man braving the cold for a chance at a trout kill will not return to winter. He stands before a New England spring of peepers at the woodline, bonfires built of winter-fall, dockside Adirondacks draped in blankets of fine wool. The good green things—the enduring pattern of everything just and right—is on the move. The setbacks, the sigh-white snows and hail, cannot hold the momentum back now. We may well lose the rest of April to the grey; the farsighted forecast calls for weekends of snow and of rain. Tomorrow will be warmer though. Soon the gardens will be turned with heavy hoe and eager hand, the children will wander past the threshold into the fields and forests further, the light will grow longer. Then one fine day, we’ll look up from our little chores and realize we haven’t thought about winter in weeks. Maybe it comes as a smell at first, a patch of rich loam hit by the sun. Maybe spotting the first bud on the lilac. Perhaps we will be surprised by the sound of frogsong swelling from the ditch, or blindsided by the sudden blur of barn swallows cartwheeling past the shed. There will be laundry on the line again. The screen door will slam with the joy-rush of children. We’ll find ourselves walking barefoot across the porch and thinking only of what to plant next, what to grill for dinner, how to stretch the daylight just a little further past May Day toward the solstice.
Let the snow fall one more time. Let the firewood stack shrink a bit further. Let us be shaken from sleep by our children and stirred by the reflection of moonlight off a snow covered field. The world is waking, the green is coming, and like the young angler with cold fingers and steady heart, we cannot be denied our spring.
What a beautiful capture of what New England (and upstate NY) feels like this time of year. For us, everything is timed by the "frog run" of maple syrup making. I love the twists and turns of the weather this time of year and happily build one more fire in the woodstove each night.
The late snow here is already gone. I heard the peepers the other night. We are not going back.