The calendar tells me that today is the first day of spring, the vernal equinox, the day the sun crosses the equator. In watching the sunrise at 7:20 am and set at 7:27 pm I confirm the calendar, but the arrival of spring seems so much more than the length of the day or the date on the calendar. Spring does not greet you with a harsh slap on the face like winter, and it does not induce nostalgia in tones of sepia as autumn. Spring is quiet, gentle, easing your senses out of their slumber after a winter’s nap. It is a comfortable season, you are surprised when you look around and find that it has arrived while you were attending to other business.
On the island, spring gives you subtle clues that it is coming. We did not appreciate those clues last year as we were being pummeled by a snow that continued to fall well into April. The island weather has been gentle this year and we have kept our senses open for the changes that indicate the subtle arrival of the gentle season. The undeniable urge to start going through the garage and discard anything that you have not used in over a year is surely one of the first signs we encountered. The fact that we built a barn this year and had a significant amount of construction debris likely played a small part in the early arrival of this impulse. It was on one of our ‘dump runs’ that we noticed several other signs of the season.
As we finished loading the back of the Suburban with the construction debris, we paused for a moment to listen to a sound that had not been heard since November. The sound of several hundred nesting seagulls that inhabit a small sand bar in the middle of the bay our house overlooks. Their raucous caws and cries were a welcome sound, complimented later in the day by several over flights of geese returning to the island from the winter feeding grounds.
Along the roadway we noticed Islanders going about their business, clearing away the road sand that had gathered in their drives over the winter. Like the seagulls, the Islanders began to pop out of the homes, cleaning their cars, washing the front porch, and hanging laundry on the line to capture some of the sun’s warmth that had begun to arrive. In the flower beds, the first of the paper-whites have begun to erupt from the snow cleared ground, and in the pasture, the horses are all enjoying long rolls in the soft earth as they work to shed out the winter coat.
In a short time, the days will warm and lengthen; summer will surely arrive with the obligations of the garden, the yard, and the flower beds. But for now, with an afternoon of sun, the chores completed, we take a moment to sit, breath in the changing of the season, and rejoice in the arrival of spring.
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