First Day of Spring

On the first official day of Spring, as I worked this afternoon in the back yard (78°), indications that this past winter was one of the mildest of all time:

1. Sage is probably the heartiest of our perennial herbs. I’m able to use it regularly, fresh, in the Thanksgiving cornbread-sausage stuffing. But it’s usually died off by mid-December under the snow and freezes. This year it survived the whole winter and the shrub is still surviving, if not full, vibrant. I might have to make a Saltimbocca for dinner this week.

2. At the beginning of December we got our first snow, about one inch. It didn’t require the use of our snow blower but I thought it best to get some gas and try to start it in preparation for the snow I thought must be to come. But it wouldn’t start and so I took it in for a tune-up which turned into a two-month hassle of resolving a recall of the injection system. Fortunately, I didn’t need the blower for those two months, or the month since. This afternoon I started it (successfully) for the first time in order to run out the gas tank. It took two hours for the still-full tank to run dry.

3. We had four gold fish in our above-ground pond last year. In November I tried to get them into an indoor tank to winter-over but was only able to net two. I assumed the other two had either been dinner for a raccoon or cat (as has happened in the past) or I would find their floating carcasses when the ice went out this spring (as has happened in the past). The small pond typically freezes through over winter. But as I was emptying and cleaning out the pond this afternoon I saw both of them desperately swimming in the slowly diminishing water. I netted and reunited them with their buddies from last year in the indoor tank. How they survived under the ice without oxygen or food I don’t know. A few weeks from now they’ll all four go back into the pond. Late next fall, when I try again to bring them indoors, they’ll have forgotten altogether their being brought in or not brought in this winter. But they’re gold fish, so they’ve probably already forgotten.

The (Second) First Sign of Spring

The temperature rose above 60° today (near 70° finally) and I brought my moccasins out of the closet where they had been sequestered since last October. For most of the spring, summer, and fall I wear moccasins (sans socks) most days. I’ve done so off and on – mostly on – for at least 50 of my 64 years. I don’t know how this habit began. I have pictures of me as an Indian Guide, age about 12, wearing moccasins. There are also pictures of me at about age 15 (embarrassing pictures of me in a baseball uniform, striking poses mimicking early ‘60s baseball cards) wearing moccasins. There was a professor of theater at Wichita State (Wichita University back then) when I first went to college who wore moccasins and whose daughter was the girlfriend of a friend of mine and perhaps he was an influence. Maybe in the late ‘60s and ‘70s the moccasins fit into my faux-hippie and faux-scholar personas. Certainly they fit neatly into my move into the outdoors, camping and fishing, in the ‘80s and ‘90s. But I guess what probably works throughout my moccasin days (or years) is that they’re inexpensive and they’re comfortable, simple. And year after year, pulled from the back of the closet, they’re a welcome harbinger of spring.

The (First) First Sign of Spring

It’s still low-20s overnight and upper-30s to low-40s for highs. And there is still snow in the forecast, and probably will be for another month or so. But this weekend saw the first sign of spring (or at least the first first sign of spring) – pitchers and catchers (and any other players who want to join them) report to MLB Spring Training this weekend in Florida (Citrus League) and Arizona (Cactus League). In two weeks, the spring games begin. And in less than six weeks, the regular season – 162 games plus post-season – begins. For some it’s the blooming of the crocuses and daffodils, for others it’s the return of the robins. For me it’s the arrival of Spring Training and the promise of a long and lazy summer of daily following box scores.

February Daffodils

I should be writing this a month from now rather than now, but the daffodils have started to come up. We have a couple of clumps of 3” stalks that apparently were fooled the past few weeks when the temperatures were in the 40s and 50s and the sun was out. You can’t blame them. Everyone was dreaming of spring – biking and fishing, grilling and gardening. Why shouldn’t the daffodils be duped like the rest of us? But this week the temperatures have fallen back into the 20s and 30s, and the snow has fallen again. For us, it’s easy to return to our sweaters and knit caps and gloves, and wait another month for the hope of spring. But I worry that the daffodils have played their hopes too early. They’ve committed to a cruel weather ruse, and may not survive to bloom. A small, perhaps, but sad casualty of an unpredictable climate.

Spring

Our first real late-Spring day, 74° and sunny, only a breeze, first morning walk in shorts and t-shirt, children out playing, dogs barking, doors and windows open, grills cleaned, pork loins on the smoker, eating on the deck, two rose-breasted grosbeaks at the feeder (first time), the sun setting, the promise of summer.

November in April

A cold rain and wind this morning on my walk. 36° (“feels like 28°”). I adjust my route to avoid the northeast wind as best I can. The tulips, opened over the weekend, are closed again, confused. North of here there is sleet and snow, roads are slick (“travel not advised”), the schools are closing this afternoon. My plan tomorrow was to drive to Des Moines for a noon Iowa Cubs game, but the forecast, which was for 60° and sunny two days ago, is now cloudy, 50°, and windy (and that 50° will no doubt happen in the mid-afternoon if it happens at all); the plan will probably not hold up. I hung the snow shovel in the garage yesterday. But I still haven’t drained the gas from the snow blower. You can’t be too wary in April in Iowa.

Spring

It’s in Spring when the ground thaws and smells sweet with the rot of Fall’s decay, when Winter’s snow’s grime fades, when grass emerges slowly green through rusted preserve, when daffodils and crocus and hyacinth bloom early with promise, when clouds laze across the sky, when cold rain soaks flushed worms squirming onto sidewalks, when male sparrows spar in the early morning for nesting space to entice their hoped-for mates, when squirrels roam in search of their store of seeds and nuts, when rabbits and chip monks browse the as-yet-planted garden to stake out their places at the green buffet, when cats sit on porches and try to recall what they’re supposed to do, when dogs have more to bark at than they have for months, when the sun fools the 50-degree temperature into feeling like 70, when sweatpants and sweatshirts give way to shorts and tee-shirts for the morning walk, when the doors and windows are freed open and the breeze billows the curtains in the bathroom, when gin and tonic replaces rum and coke, when Sauvignon Blanc replaces Zinfandel, when Harley engines growl the morning awake, when the warmth of hope and all-things-possible takes over from the chill of will-this-ever-end, when illusion thankfully replaces reality.

First Spring Fishing Trip

My first (early) spring fishing trip to northeast Iowa looked promising. The forecast was for sun and upper 50s on Wednesday, then clouds and lower 60s Thursday, then down to upper 40s Friday morning. Most of the snow in the valleys has melted but not so much as to flood the streams. Last year’s vegetation has been tamped down by winter’s snow and early flooding a couple of weeks ago, making for easy footing along the banks. And there never is much pressure this early in the season.

My first stop was Ensign Hollow, north of Strawberry Point, a small, winding catch-and-release, artificial-only stream. For half a mile up the stream, stopping at maybe a dozen small runs and riffles, I didn’t see or feel a fish. But it’s typical this time of the year, in high water, for the fish to spend much of the day hunkered under bank hides, not feeding, so I didn’t get frustrated, just enjoyed being outside in the warmth, the quiet, the only sound of birds and running stream. And in the next-to-the-last run on the upper part of the stream, a run where I’ve had luck in the past, I did hook into a 10-inch brown trout (good sized for this stream) that I maneuvered to the lower end of the run where I would have had to slip down the bank into the water to release it if it wouldn’t have thankfully flipped the fly out of its lip before I had to.

But Ensign Hollow – and one fish – would wind up being the highlight of the trip.

I drove on up to Decorah, where I was spending the night, and since it was still mid-afternoon, decided to drive to South Pine, a tiny stream that holds the only population of native brook trout in Iowa. I’ve fished South Pine probably half a dozen times, and I don’t think I’ve once been able to find the parking area without getting lost in the maze of dirt roads in the area. This time I was lost for nearly an hour before finally recognizing where I was and where I needed to go. To get to the stream from the parking area, you need to hike down beside a corn field, then further down through a narrow valley, without a path of any kind, through trees, vines, brush, and, this time of year, snow. I remembered the trek being about half a mile, but as I cut my way through the thicket, I realized it was closer to a mile. And when I finally got to the stream, I was reminded why so few make the effort to get there.

South Pine is no more than two or three feet wide in most places, widening out to ten to twelve next to the bluffs, but too shallow and slow there to hold fish. As I walked upstream, I quickly saw that there wasn’t much fishing on the stream – the water was low, there were several bank hides that had collapsed into the water, and there were no fish visible in the clear water. I walked the quarter mile up from the fence at the east end of the stream, but was only able to put my fly into two small runs, with no fish apparent. A frustrating trek. But not as frustrating as the trek back to the car. I didn’t get lost, but I did get fouled in the snow and brush. At a certain point, I looked up the hill, along a deer run, and thought it might be best to hike up the hill, which I assumed would lead me to the cornfield that would lead to the car. But that hike would be circuitous, losing the deer run, through deep snow at times, thickets of vine, some with thorns. By the time I reached the corn field out of the woods, I was sweating and looking out over a landscape of rubble and snow and mud that I only thought led back to the car. Fortunately, it did, finally. And I drove back to Decorah, checked into the motel, and had a nice dinner in town that night, not fish.

The next morning I drove up through Waukon, north to one of my favorite streams, Waterloo, to fish the take-and-release section south of the Highway 76 bridge, near the Minnesota border. I was surprised to see a truck in the parking area, but figured the stream was long enough for two of us. I’d heard on the news in the morning that flooding was expected in the next few days, and was worried the water might already be high and muddy. It was a bit higher than usual, not too bad. But the fish didn’t seem to be anywhere in the stream. I fished from the parking area up to the bridge, not able to get down the bank to about half of the runs or pools because of my bad knee, but didn’t get even a bump, let alone a strike or see a sign of a fish. As I was fishing one of the last pools back near the parking lot, the other fisher from the truck came over and asked how I was doing. “Nothing,” I said. “That makes me feel better,” he said. “Nothing for me either.” And that made me feel somewhat better as well. It wasn’t something I was or wasn’t doing. Or at least I was or wasn’t doing the same wrong thing as this other sorry angler.

But as I waded through the stream back to the parking lot, and across the still melting snow, I stopped and just stood still, looking down the valley, at the bare gray trees etched against the snow on the hills, the soft whisper of the wind. And that seemed enough, worth it. As the old saw goes, it's called “fishing,” not “catching.”

First Sign of Spring

A few days ago, on my morning walk, I saw my first robin of spring. A few minutes later I saw my second. And a few minutes after that I saw my next dozen, a crowd of them flitting on the still-brown grass. And every day since, I see them everywhere, the prevailing harbinger of spring, returned from their winter in the woods. Robins don’t migrate south, but rather to the nearest forest where they had lived for millennia before humans migrated to the continent, built cities and then expanses of lawns that provided the robin with a convenient buffet of worms and insects in the manicured grass and grass roots. But when the snow falls and the ground freezes, the buffet closes, and the robins return to the forest and feeding on the insects in the bark of trees. So when the snow melts and the ground thaws, the robin is well-positioned to emerge and become the proverbial first sign of spring.

In the next week or so, though, we’ll no longer notice the muted robin as it recedes to the background in its gray and rust coloring, replaced by first the flowering hyacinth, crocus, daffodil, and then the more vivid yellow goldfinch, bright blue jay, sleek cedar waxwing. The grass will grow green, the trees will bud, leaf out, and bloom white, pink, purple, red. The robin will still be there. Just not as prominent as it is today.