This seems like the longest spring I can remember. Winter fizzled out this year, with little snow or cold weather beyond January. February kept us in a holding pattern. Winter seemed over, but we knew spring was a ways off. We began to warm up a bit in March and snow was mostly gone by mid-month.
During this time, I found myself looking for signs of spring, even though the calendar said it was still winter. All Minnesotans long for spring at some point. Even the most hardy winter lovers are ready to move on by March. But waiting for spring in this country can test anyone’s patience.
We’ve had some warm spells that have given us a foretaste of glorious summer. This year the ice was off the lake by April 4th, almost as early as last year, when spring came charging in full force in March. But this year spring advances and retreats like the last glaciers of the Ice Age. We’ve had temps in the 60s followed by temps in the 30s with snow.
On the lake, evidence of spring was proclaimed by the cacophony of waterfowl and shore birds from mid-March until ice out. We are blessed to have the outlet of our lake on the Crow Wing chain as our front yard. A small bay where the river reappears at the end of the lake stays open throughout the winter and is home to about 8 or 10 trumpet swans. As the the weather warmed and the open water increased in size, the swans were joined by Canada geese, then ducks including mallards, bluebills (scaup), goldeneyes and others. Then came mergansers and sandhill cranes (heard but yet to be seen). The loons and great blue herons arrived just before ice-out. A couple of juvenile bald eagles, probably raised in the nest between 5th and 6th Crow Wing, have been roosting in the white pines behind our house, eyeing the ducks and thinking about their first fishing forays.
In the much quieter woods, evidence of spring is slow to appear. Last week, my granddaughter and I inspected the hepatica, just beginning to bloom. A few mayflowers and violets are appearing this week. The red maples I planted last year flowered at Easter, as did the leatherwood. Other trees and shrubs have broken bud but have yet to unfurl their first leaves. Slowly, slowly is the spring unfolding.
I’ve learned to appreciate the waiting. When I was a kid, I looked forward to spring only as a precursor to the fishing opener and the warm-up to summer. Spring was just a season of mud and restless anticipation. And summers were always too short. Then back to school and more waiting, for hunting season, first snow, ice for fishing, for Christmas break.
Often I sense that time is accelerating as I get older. The weeks and months fly by and before you know it your first little grandchild is 12 years old and taller than her grandma. Now this long, slow spring feels like a gift of time. There was time get in some woodcutting before the ground thaws. There is time to rake up last fall’s leaves and the winter detritus before the grass takes off. There is time to observe the each week’s arriving migrants among the songbirds. And there is time to walk in the woods with my youngest granddaughter to look for new wildflowers, to experience her wonder and joy. So let spring take its sweet time in coming, for the time is sweet.
We are fortunate to have a number of mature Eastern white pines (Pinus strobus), the tree the Ojibwe call zhingwaak, on our land. For me, the white pine symbolizes my love for this place called Minnesota. Tracing the silhouettes of pines at sunset on Island Lake as young boy, I first knew the joy of observing nature. I’ve wanted to live among the pines ever since.
everal days of work, the building site looks like a battlefield. I’ve learned a lot about felling trees and fixing chainsaws. So far, I’ve only had one near-miss in the category of getting clobbered by a falling tree, and that was one that got hung up in another tree. I’ve learned that happens a lot with basswoods and their large canopies.
Finally, I have learned that I am not a logger. In the land where Paul Bunyan was born, Minnesota’s rich logging history is often romanticized. Although I’ve gotten somewhat proficient at the job, I have found no romance in the work. I don’t think I would have fit in among the men in the logging camps of yore. Call me a tree hugger, but I don’t like cutting down living trees. I think about the tons of carbon dioxide all that foliage processes. I could try to figure out the carbon footprint of our home, and determine whether the energy-efficient design offsets the biological impact. Or I could, and probably will, plant more trees to replace those I cut down.
This is home. 