Awaiting Spring

Looking down, the view by the creek resembled a wide flowing river with frothy rapids, billows, white-capped waves and even a mountain in the shape of a smooth rock on the bank. The pine poking out of the snow seemed to be a tall spruce, but it's a small tree, only a few inches high, looking hopeful in its pool of sunlight. Toward the end of winter, one becomes maudlin and a tad fanciful.

It has been a long cold winter, and we are ready for springtime. The songs of the owls brought that home yesterday. I listened to them calling to each other across the woods and thought that new life in the old nest by the beaver pond was beginning, that the next singers would be Saw-whet Owls and the maple sugaring season was not far off, that it would not be long before I could ramble the fields again and there would be wildflowers everywhere.

Last year at this time, maple syrup operations in the highlands were in full swing, and the geese had returned. This year, we still have a way to go before those happy events occur, but we watch the clouds for flocks, and we scan treelines for fragrant smoke arising from sugar shacks. In March, hope takes on the shapes of singing geese and maple trees.