From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.” Rainer Maria Rilke

Well, perhaps I spoke too soon… Yesterday’s overnight temperatures dropped drastically from last week’s 60 degree weather, when a few hopeful folks wore shorts and sandals. Today it’s back to the freezing teens and twenties when we continue to shovel snow in down jackets and mittens. Up to a foot of snow has coated our almost green lawn.

Along with weatherman Paul Douglas, I predicted that would happen. Remember, it’s basketball tournament time in Minnesota. We always get a blast of snow storms during tournament weeks. Life is slowly returning to the way we’re used to.

Birds are singing and soon the loons will be back. A pair return each spring to enjoy swimming in Carman’s Bay. Though I’m listening, I haven’t heard their memorable, haunting loon call yet, but I know that soon they’ll be swimming around ice chunks, dipping and dunking in the opening waters of our bay.   

Warmer weather and high winds have melted the ice and opened the bays on the lake. A few fishermen and boaters are freezing on the water already. It’s only the end of March, but this year the lake has opened up early. Looking out my windows to the lake, I’ve missed seeing snowmobiles coming through the “narrows” racing toward our Carman’s Bay. Daily, cross country skiers and folks would walk with their dogs past my window, even a few cars and pickups drove on the ice. Not this winter. Winter is not what it used to be. We haven’t had much of a winter.

Today driving on the lake feels too treacherous for me, though I do remember doing the same as a teenager on Lake Minnewaska. On many lakes in Minnesota it’s a contest to pick the date when the ice is completely off the lake, and boats can meander through the bays. Remember when folks bet on when an old car would crash through the ice?

Plump cardinals, pecking woodpeckers and nuthatches perch on the bird feeder on our deck outside my window. Birds flutter through the neighborhood trees creating a symphony of bird songs and chattering. They’re  busily gathering food before the rains come. How happy the birds are to be back on the lake and flying through our woods. Hearing their songs puts joy in my day. When I collect the paper at the mailbox early in the morning, a cardinal often answers my whistle with repeated whistles of his own.

As the calendar soon turns its pages to April, I recall T.S. Eliot’s poem: he wrote that April is often one of the “cruelest months of the year.” Temps go up and down…April is a teaser. Up here in the Northlands spring is ready to burst with day lilies bursting through the dirt and tulips’ green tips peeking through dry, decaying leaves. We wait with high hopes for tulips, hyacinths and daffodils to push their way through frozen grounds. Who doesn’t long to smell that sweet aroma of lilacs blooming in the neighborhood, see yellow forsythia budding, dogwood’s red branches and fuzzy pussy willows?

Relax; spring is coming soon.

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.