In the March page of our almanac, opposite the 20th of the month we find
the bold assertion, "Now spring begins;" but in the northern part of New
England, for which this almanac was especially compiled, the weather
does not bear out the statement.
The snow may be gone from the fields except in grimy drifts, in hollows
and along fences and woodsides; but there is scarcely a sign of spring
in the nakedness of pasture, meadow, and ploughed land, now more dreary
in the dun desolation of lifeless grass, debris of stacks, and black
furrows than when the first snow covered the lingering greenness of
December.
It is quite as likely that the open lands are still under the worn and
dusty blanket of snow, smirched with all the litter cast upon it by
cross-lot-faring teams, and wintry winds blowing for months from every
quarter. The same untidiness pervades all outdoors. We could never
believe that so many odds and ends could have been thrown out of doors
helter-skelter, in three months of ordinary life, till the proof
confronts us on the surface of the subsiding snow or lies stranded on
the bare earth. The wind comes with an icier breath from the wintrier
north, and yet blows untempered from the south, over fields by turns
frozen and sodden, through which the swollen brooks rush in yellow
torrents with sullen monotonous complaint.
One may get more comfort in the woods, though the snow still lies deep
in their shelter; for here may be found the sugar-maker's camp, with its
mixed odors of pungent smoke and saccharine steam, its wide environment
of dripping spouts and tinkling tin buckets, signs that at last the
pulse of the trees is stirred by a subtle promise of returning spring.
The coarse-grained snow is strewn thickly with shards of bark that the
trees have sloughed in their long hibernation, with shreds and tatters
of their tempest-torn branches. But all this litter does not offend the
eye nor look out of place, like that which is scattered in fields and
about homesteads. When this three months' downfall of fragments sinks to
the carpet of flattened leaves, it will be at one with it, an inwoven
pattern, as comely as the shifting mesh of browner shadows that trunks
and branches weave between the splashes of sunshine. Among these is a
garnishment of green moss patches and fronds of perennial ferns which
tell of life that the stress of winter could not overcome. One may
discover, amid the purple lobes of the squirrelcup leaves, downy buds
that promise blossoms, and others, callower, but of like promise, under
the rusty links of the arbutus chain.
One hears the resonant call of a woodpecker rattled out on a seasoned
branch or hollow stub, and may catch the muffled beat of the partridge's
drum, silent since the dreamy days of Indian summer, now throbbing
again in slow and accelerated pulsations of evasive sound through the
unroofed arches of the woodlands. And one may hear, wondering where the
poor vagrants find food and water, the wild clangor of the geese
trumpeting their aerial northward march, and the quick whistle of the
wild duck's pinions,--hear the carol of an untimely bluebird and the
disconsolate yelp of a robin; but yet it is not spring.
Presently comes a great downfall of snow, making the earth beautiful
again with a whiteness outshining that of the winter that is past. The
damp flakes cling to every surface, and clothe wall, fence and tree,
field and forest, with a more radiant mantle than the dusty snow and
slanted sunshine of winter gave them.
There is nothing hopeful of spring but a few meagre signs, and the
tradition that spring has always come heretofore.
It is not winter, it is not spring, but a season with an individuality
as marked as either, yet without a name.