Spring Thaw

We’re starting to thaw out here in Western Massachusetts. This was my second full winter in New England, and it was relentless. Last year’s winter was milder, though we had one huge snow storm. This year we didn’t get any blizzards, and none of the storms dropped more than a foot of snow, but it was crazy cold, with weeks without the mercury rising above freezing and many sub-zero nights. So the snow we did have never melted and each storm dropped a few more inches, adding to the feet already on the ground.

But now spring is upon us, both on the calendar and in the air. The forecast for the first day of spring has temps in the fifties with sunshine. There have been a few warm days in the last couple of weeks, but they were rainy. (Something I’ll never get used to here on the East Coast—when it’s cloudy it is warm and muggy, when it’s sunny, expect cool temperatures and a nice breeze.)

The days are much longer. The piles of plowed snow on the side of the road are melting away. The robins are bouncing around in the puddles, looking for worms.  The squirrels scamper around the hillside behind our apartment. The nights are still cold, dropping below freezing and icing up all the snowmelt, and there’s still a threat of snow, but now it should melt within a day or two.

One of the more grim reminders of spring’s arrival is all the vultures circling around. As the snow melts it reveals all the little creatures that didn’t make it through winter, squirrelsicles and possum-pops. The vultures obligingly clean up what winter has left behind. I saw two floating around on a draft near our apartment, which is expected, since we live between a mountain and a river with lots of green-space for the scavengers to peruse. While in Greenfield yesterday, April and I saw a wake of vultures that numbered at least twenty. (We’re looking to move to Greenfield. I hope this isn’t a bad omen.)

So spring has sprung; birds singing, trees budding, but vultures gliding by remind us of Eliot’s dictum: April is the cruelest month. March can also be pretty bad.