Fern Glen Essays
Signs of Spring
by Judy Sullivan

My husband, daughter and I made our monthly medical pilgrimage to Manhattan last week. He drives and she has a bad back, so I'm relegated to the rear seat. From October through April this arrangement significantly enhances my strategic position as maternal martyr, as the flood of hot air in the front of the car (both from the ducts and the occupants) is reduced to a thin trickle by the time it reaches the Siberian plateau on which I shiver. Huddled beneath the layers of down jackets cast off by my sweltering spouse and offspring, and unable to hear much conversation above the roar of a disengaged muffler, I was abandoned to my own thoughts. Truly, one couldn't imagine a less inviting prospect.

Usually I would have made the best of the situation and indulged in one of my favorite pastimes...60 mph botany. Commuting to IES, it's gotten to the point where I can make reasonable speculations about the composition of a habitat while I perform my daily bump and grind down the Taconic Parkway. (Every twenty feet a bump, then I grind the gears.) I usually find this vastly entertaining. However, the closer one gets to the city, the more congested the traffic and the flotsam of human habitation. On this trip, despite valiant attempts to be fascinated by the landscape, my efforts fell woefully short of the mark. I was reduced to staring bleakly out the salt-sprayed window at scenes that inspired only visions of glaciers and gulags.

A portion of my favorite poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins trudged through my memory in stout winter boots.

"And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
 And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
 Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod."

Naked trees. Withered leaves. Knifing wind. Suburban sprawl. I sank into bitter mental lethargy.

By now, you must be as depressed as I. You may be wondering what protracted adolescence afflicts me that I would count such morose sentiments among my favorite literary works. Yet the voice of this humble naturalist cum monk, gently insistent, inserted a wrench in my treadmill of negativity. The poem continued.

In my automotive Antarctica, there came a perceptible thaw. I reflected on the latent signals of seasonal change. Above the sodden soil of the wetlands slender spires of skunk cabbage stand, ready to unfurl with the first brisk winds of March. Beneath the snow, beneath the earth, blooms of woodland wildflowers, already formed, wait only for the drumming of an April rain to signal their appearance. The trees are naked, yet every twig bears buds bursting with anticipation of a new season's wardrobe. Despite the snow, the great horned owls prepare to nest. Eager skunks are spooning in the shrubbery. Everywhere I look, I see signs of spring. In fact, nature was prepared for spring long before the last leaves of summer drifted, spinning, to the ground.

"And for all this, nature is never spent;
 There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
 And though the last lights off the black West went
 Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-"

In my seared, bleared, smeared soul were the stirrings of a vernal resurrection. Before the next subzero spell drives you under down duvets, venture out to seek what winter waits for you to discover — that spring is just around the corner.

Questions, comments, or other feedback to Judy Sullivan.