As I write, morning is crawling out from under the rock of night and the day has dawned, lightly fogged. Yesterday our farm was the center of a fog bank; as we took our morning walk, it seemed to us that all of the fog radiated from some central point near the marsh on its southern boundary. Today, by contrast, the fog seems to be thin and lightly dispersed throughout the area. Today’s fog will probably not have the staying power yesterday’s had, and will likely be gone before the morning has shaken off its cobwebs, performed its toilette, and become properly alert.
Yesterday’s walk was in the fog, an unusual occurrence since it often burns off by mid-morning when our walk usually begins. A walk in the fog is refreshing, since nothing looks as it ordinarily does, and even the most familiar objects shyly suggest an illicit, alternative life-style just beyond the capabilities of our imagination. It’s as if things usually taken for granted are in desperate assertion of hitherto unrevealed qualities in order to put the lie to our complacent recognition, to beg us to acknowledge more to them than our complacency can comprehend.
As yesterday’s fog burned off, a flock of robins was revealed, clustered about the base of two of the larger trees in the spinney that served as the apex of our walk. Robins usually seem more solitary in habitude, but these had found something of more interest than solitude and were happily sharing their find. In truth, the robins were only the day’s second harbinger of spring. The first was the blooming skunk cabbages in the marshy flats adjoining our neighbor’s pond – pale yellow hints of a spring to come, assured complements to the rust red of the robins’ breasts.
The third major harbinger revealed itself late in the afternoon after the sun had been on display for a few hours: as the sunlight waxed, a riot of color broke out underneath one of the apple trees in our tiny orchard. The crocus array Helen planted there a decade ago finally bloomed anew: purples, blues, yellows thickly scattered at the base of an as-yet leafless tree, ablaze in a wet, mossy-dark field, a shade of green that tugs on heartstrings attuned to the smell of fresh-mown grass in such a way as to yields anticipation, rather than dread, of the work required to achieve it. The long summer will put paid to our eagerness, but, for now, our mowers remain restless in their stalls while the grass emerges from hibernation. And so the crocuses are granted their annual resplendent show, reprieved for now from their eventual mutilation by the blades of summer.
Bird song grew more abundant as yesterday’s fog dispersed. Its density didn’t arise to the levels of a full spring day, but its gradual daily increase serves as yet another indication that spring is nearby. For yesterday was alive, a not-yet-spring day typical of late winter in Humptulips County – full of tantalizing promises to fire the imagination; hinting of a future weal to ward us against the gray of wintry days yet to come.
Today looks to promise more of the same as yesterday, but make no mistake: winter remains in ascendancy, while spring only lurks in its corners. But that’s enough for me; enough for now.
