Mainspring

(I’ll return to Ethiopian posts soon, but today I wanted to be in the moment.)

A Maine spring comes grudgingly to start with…. here is the back of my house on March 28, four days ago. For scale, to the right of the large tree is our picnic table partly covered by an avalanche of snow.

In the woods, the streams are thawing and filling fast. Icicles delicately dangle tiny tutus, remnants of their contacts with the melted surface ice:

The woods are still quiet, but not empty: a pileated woodpecker has created an impressive trio of holes and a correspondingly gigantic pile of woodchips:

Tracks have grown bigger as the snow melts. This is probably a fox or a coyote, two paws registering on top of one another, but I dreamt of bears, and by tomorrow I will probably think “Sasquatch”.

Three hours drive to the south, in Massachusetts, the skunk cabbage is pushing up through the snow:

A deep imperial red-purple at first:

The deer are quick to appear:

There’s not much green to eat yet, so they can’t be choosy:

And so the woods awaken again…..