Cabin Journal: What Spring Feels Like

With all the snow still on Mount Meeker (right), it may not look like May, but the signs of spring are unmistakable. After being gone from the cabin for two weeks, I arrived to find something missing—something huge. Almost all the snow had melted, so when I looked out the back window, I could see the picnic table that had been covered with snow all winter. On the east side, the septic system was now visible. The back porch was unburied.

Small shoots of grass are coming up among last year’s dead grasses, and I can hear the frogs down by the creek, singing quite lustily. A few weeks ago, the ground squirrels and chipmunks were out, looking a little dazed after a long winter underground. This week I heard the unmistakable buzzing of a hummingbird. Around the valley, the aspens are blossoming (below), a pale pink against the deep blue sky.

It feels like the shackles are coming off the earth. Now that the weight of the snow is gone, the earth is rebounding, and life is emerging: the chipmunks and bears from hibernation, the pasqueflowers and spring beauty poking up from the ground; the hummingbirds, house wrens and swallows arriving from other parts of the world. All of nature is responding to the sun’s warmth, as the earth turns toward the sun. Even the creek, silent all winter under a mantle of snow, has come alive, filling every corner of the creekbed, speeding down the hillside, finally free to go where it wants. Every crease in the hills is filled with running water.

It feels like an explosion of energy that can’t be controlled, like something that has been tightly held in check has been loosened. Who knows what this could lead to?