A mute cloud cover arrived this late morning, asking for lamps to be switched on. Instead, I lit candles, grateful for the excuse of quiet and the shadows that appear from the flicker of flame light. Each year in the north I still find surprise in the rapid swings of light and dark and how it affects the world, how it affects how to be. Spring becomes such a messy mix of fast and slow—dizzying gains of daylight that you can barely adapt to, frozen rivers that suddenly break and flood; and then the slow melt of a winter’s worth of ice and snow, trees that still need the flow of sap for months before the first leaves appear in late May.
Each year I mean to record the small details, the minute changes and arrivals that mark spring, but somehow I fail to do it. This year I decided to make a running list.
Spring is when the day the light begins to grow noticeably, a turn that you can recognize suddenly in the quality of the light. The slant more horizontal, an indescribable but present more in the light that makes the landscape appear slightly clearer, in higher definition. More alive. Spring is the unignorable stirring that follows the return of daylight—a return that your body responds to with involuntary gratitude, of energy that you had forgotten could exist.
Spring is when there is suddenly no pause to reacquaint gradually with daylight. Spring is a week of feeling the joy of direct sunlight overtaken by evenings uncannily lit until 9 pm. Spring is having to acclimate to the idea of morning with daylight—not the inky, gradual move between night and sunrise that took up residence for so many months.
Spring is sunlight squarely flooding the house, demanding a new attention that in the winter months was absent. Spring is the extent of winter dust made visible on every surface, unseen in the darkness and twilit light of winter months. Spring is sunlight coming through windows clouded with the filmy scrim of sleet, snow, and glacial silt, and the realization that we haven’t been able to see clearly for months. Spring is when you understand why the term spring cleaning exists, when scouring the house takes on urgent and exhausting meaning.
Spring is rearranged expectation happening faster than you anticipate. Spring feels like witnessing a miracle because the landscape has been so resolutely unchanging for months—a near monochrome palette of gravel, snow, and twilight, of mountains, wiry branches, and aging road-shoulder ice. Spring is the unfailing quiet shock that life can begin again out of a landscape that seemed so resigned to permanence.
Spring is not green, but the feathery silver of pussy willows, newly noticeable in a spotlight of daylight.
Spring is slow melt—gradual thaw and freeze and thaw, roads covered in washboard ice. Spring is snow that begins to intermittently fall, having less strength or interest in staying. Spring is frozen ponds that you once walked across without thinking turned into sloshy masses, rimmed in a slurry of reeds and melt. Spring is new potholes appearing as the roads warm.
Spring is light that insistently keeps growing, a greedy light that moves beyond the equity of equinox and demands attention that turns into a type of mania—a scouring daylight that exposes all and leaves little room for shadow, for rest in waking moments. Spring is daylight that feels like a guest who won’t leave or stop talking, greedy for the spotlight after the moon and streetlights have been the main source of light in a winter sky. Spring is the arrival of black-out curtains for sale once again in stores, of windows paneled with aluminum foil when you forgot a certain slant of light that breaks through, of neighbors who ask after months of forgetting when you plant to take it down.
Spring feels as if the world has suddenly been turned on—a light that is insistent—always available, always ready, always demanding. Spring is manic energy at a time when trails have become melting slicks of ice from months of footsteps and thaw. Spring is your body absorbing the energy of long daylight, reclaiming it from winter and dark with precious few ways to expend it outside—too late for skiing, too early for walking. Spring is the feeling of an engine revving. Spring is frenetic—the manic energy rising in everyone and every living thing. Spring is when people start to go a little crazy—more fights, more crime, more suicide—the sap of life rising and needing to be tapped, to draw from the excess, make it into something reduced and taken in small doses.
Spring is sap rising in the birches, collected as it rises within the bark, to make birch water, syrup from tall pots full to the brim and boiled to a film until you add more and more. Spring is tapping the trees and feeling guilty and grateful at the same time—gratitude to know of a sign of spring arriving that would otherwise be invisible. Spring is the taste of water mixed with cambium, bark, earth, months of darkness and cold—of something that looks just like water but tastes slightly of tree that we never know quite what to do with but feels like a sort of kinship, to learn a little of what spring feels like from within the bark of a tree.
Spring is the return of autumn after the snow and ice melt, the sight of fallen, decaying leaves that overwintered, of grass that is still brown with cold and lack of sunlight. Spring is the smell of earth, leaf rot, and dogshit. Spring is the return of smell, the grip of ice and cold no longer locking away the odors of the land. Spring is the excitement of dogs who can smell all the activity that surrounds them, reading the landscape like a book with their noses. Spring is walking finally on clear pavement, pathways. Spring is needing boots more than you have all winter to slosh through the melting ice on the streets, to suddenly no longer needing to wear boots at all as you head out the door. Spring is muddy pawprints in the house after months of the dogs walking on ice.
Spring is the return of gulls, the first birds to arrive from a winter spent elsewhere, visiting to reclaim space in what will slowly become summer. Their arrival matched so seamlessly with the color of the melting landscape—gravel grey, snowy white—as if the land doesn’t want to shock us suddenly from the torpor of winter with a blaze of color. Spring is sound—the screeching of the gulls. Spring is anticipating after the gulls’ arrival the migration of swans, geese, sandhill crane, snow geese, grebes, terns—all arriving in staggered, seemingly agreed-upon succession. Spring is the thrill of seeing the arctic terns—one of the last to arrive from the other end of the earth, their arrival feeling like the solace of completed circumference, whole. Spring is the reminder that while we cannot travel so easily or freely, they can and do.
Spring is the arrival of hooligan, oily and silver, racing upstream after months in deep water, scooped by dip-netters lining the shores as the schools swarm inland. Spring is the sight of a few ghost-white belugas, raising their heads in the grey of high tide as they feed on the hooligan’s returning frenzy. Spring is knowing the return of the salmon will follow, each species in succession, a mirrored reflection of the birds’ arrival. Spring is the first report of bear prints in the melting snow. Spring is arrival, waking, and return.
Spring is sound, arrival, melt. Spring is a coil of sound released. Spring is the possibility of rain after months of frozen precipitation, wetting the earth and tamping down the dust of months of gravel and exposure to cold. Spring is the chance to hear rainfall on the roof as you fall asleep. Spring is the sound of moving water, which held my son’s endless fascination when he was a toddler, wanting to watch its movement more than the brown bears fighting in their pen on a visit to the zoo. Spring is hearing the sound of water moving again in the creek behind the house, seeing the glint of sunlight shining off its surface.
Spring is a slow-moving giant, adapting to the light and darks of the dying winter, soothing it without color as it releases its hold and gives over to movement once again. Spring is break up, flood, mess, and warmth. Spring is waiting for signs of leaves to break bud and know it will again—despite appearances—be summer.
I love this, and you have no idea how much I needed it. Thank you.