THEY SAY SPRING ADVANCES fifteen miles a day, about the pace of a steady walk, which explains why I could experience three springs that year. The first was in March, in Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie’s Maumee Bay, where I stayed in a small cabin near the bay to watch new grass sprouting in farmers’ fields and the broad-winged hawks that congregate in kettles high overhead. I counted a couple hundred broad-wings one day, which I thought was spectacular, but a local birder said they sometimes numbered in the tens of thousands—entire galaxies of spiral formations spinning slowly northward with the wind. In the marshes and woodlots were other early migrants: red-winged blackbirds, yellow-rumped warblers, ruby- and golden-crowned kinglets, and a brown thrasher that perched on the topmost branch of a tree beside my cabin one morning and performed tireless variations on the theme of “Here I am, look at me!”
Three weeks later, as I drove home, those same birds were showing up 300 miles north, in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The snow had finally left our yard and the woods out back, and forsythia and trillium were starting to blossom. Suddenly trout were feeding on mayflies in the rivers, morels were popping beneath the aspens, and butter-butts and kinglets were flitting among the bare branches of the trees.
Then it was time for the third spring, so I drove north again, crossed the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula, and followed a network of gravel roads until I banged up against the shore of Superior. I had the key to a friend’s cabin, but I had to shovel the snow away before I could reach the door. The ice was off the big lake—it was brilliant blue water to the horizon—but stranded on the beach were remnant icebergs spangled with sand. I looked up and saw two dozen broad-winged hawks circling high overhead, waiting for a south wind to carry them across the lake to Ontario.
Spring is the most complicated season. It arrives pulling a clanging train of machinery, and we realize that the name we’ve given it is all wrong. It doesn’t spring, it saunters—two steps forward, one back—and often it retreats like a child in a sulk and we have to wait a few days or a week before it returns.
One morning I stepped from my friend’s cabin on Lake Superior and was met by the first warm wind of the season. A familiar call sounded high overhead and I looked up to see a loon hurtling past, bound for Canada. Then came another, and another, each trailing its ululating warble.
It was the clarion announcement, the emblem of the wild north, a song that stirs primordial urges in many of us who cherish unspoiled places. It’s the music of mist-shrouded lakes deep in the spruce forest, a boreal timelessness that is perhaps best heard from a canoe. Coming from the sky above Superior it was this and more: the sound of wildness in transit, winging north with the lengthening days of this season of hope.
Beautiful. Thank you. I experience much the same when I drive from my home just north of Dallas into deep South Texas, where spring arrives in February.
Thanks, Henry. One of these springs I’m going to start driving south in February until I hit spring head-on. Might be in Texas, who knows? Then I’ll turn around and surf north at 15 miles/day taking note along the way.
We hop back and forth between Ann Arbor and Whitefish Point in the U. P., replaying the seasons and measuring their progression along the drive. Heading north today we rode a wave of turkey vultures, leaving them behind somewhere before West Branch. In the U.P. spring takes at least another week to trudge from Paradise to Whitefish Point. Just eleven miles, but Lake Superior holds the point in a winter-grip until the ice crammed into the bay from the rest of the lake finally gives way. Several years ago I photographed a blackburnian warbler hopping between icebergs hawking tiny insects over a pocket of water!
Susan — A blackburnian on the ice! I’d love to see that. Thanks for sharing it. And for the reminder about the seasonal lag in those eleven miles up to the point. One of my favorite places.
A beautiful ode to spring, that lets us see and feel what Jerry’s describing.
Friends were recently trying to ID a small bird photographed locally feeding on insects on the ice. To our surprise it was an American pipit, refueling here for a trip to breeding grounds MUCH further north.
Are birds surfing the bow wave of spring, or dragging the curtain back on it? Perhaps it depends on the species.
The season of hope, indeed!
Thanks, Don. We sometimes see small flocks of American pipits feeding in fields and meadows on their way north to the tundra, but have never seen them while ice and snow are still on the ground. The one you identified was a trailblazer and a surfer.
This American pipit was feeding on insects on the (remaining) ice on a local pond, from what I understand, the last of the remnant ice and snow in this region. It seemed very comfortable feeding out in the open like that, as it would be accustomed to in its breeding grounds in the tundra. Maybe some of the surfers feel an urge to be more-trailblazer at times, spurred on by the radiance of the season of hope.
Reminds me of high school baseball players taking hitting practice on 32-degree March afternoons…
Jerry, I love reading your writings! You write so we ‘feel’. Thanks‼️
Thank you, Chris.
Exactly!
The loon’s call — magic! I experienced multiple springs one year, first in Louisiana, then central Illinois, next southern Michigan, and finally the U.P., but don’t remember the 15 miles a day formula. Nice. And soon it will be time for spring in northern Michigan, which for me means wildflowers in the woods. Thank you for reminding me, Jerry.
Thanks, Pamela. We’re looking forward to having you and David back home this spring, and to hearing your stories about desert landscapes and people.
I recall seeing an American pipit on old snow in Glacier National Park one day in late June, 20+ years ago.
That must have been a sight, Rebekah. Anomalies abound. In January a few years ago, Gail and I watched a pair of eastern bluebirds in the autumn olives on our property, with a foot of snow on the ground beneath them.
Really nice writing – the final sentences of your last two paragraphs – “each trailing its ululating warble” and “the sound of wildness in transit, winging north with the lengthening days of this season of hope” made me sigh with pleasure and recognition. Thank you.
Wish I could join you at Bear River this year – the last time I took your workshop was 2003 (!). Bear River always conflicts with a professional conference I’m required to attend. Maybe next year…
Thank you, Sondra! Was it really 2003? I hope you can make it back to Bear River one of these years.