Fishing for Spring in Vermont

     I went fishing for spring after a long and serious-minded winter. There is nothing abhorrent in being serious-minded from time to time, for a time. Alas, winter’s time had come and gone many times in my mind. The calendar, and more critically the thermometer, along with my creaking bones, spoke of the lingering foreverness of dreary cold without the softening and pleasure of fresh snow. 

     A friend, new to Vermont, relates how she came to understand when spring arrives in the Green Mountains, it strikes a chord in all that live here. Spring crashes the fences and gates like a mob having too long-awaited for ticket takers to open the way onto the fields of music at Woodstock. 

     She spoke of the rewards of waiting so long for spring, having endured the false starts indicative of mud seasons followed by frozen ruts, maple trees with engorged arteries of sweet rivers one day followed by maple sap reluctantly dripping a day later, of temperatures not felt or seen in seemingly millennia bursting upwards in a few hours time only to crash back into subversive cold seemingly as deep-rooted as burdock. 

     When the real thing strikes, and holds, albeit well past the gentle gradual warm-up of our southern brothers in Albany and parts further south, when it burst through the wall of Vermont Winter’s Last Stand, the door shatters in icicle splinters as the bull of spring snorts steam and fire charging with the energy of a molten red wood stove. Church bells ring, fire department sirens shrill. Rabbits and robins come out from cover. Goldfinches once dreary and drab butter up better than Cabot. Vermonters and turkeys dare shine their matching white legs. College students climb rooftops to bare-all. Spring in Vermont is not a gradation of time, spring in Vermont is a day. Just as New Year's Day is a pinnacle champagne cork popping event, so is spring in Vermont. 

     While you impatiently wait for the clock strike of spring, imagine the flowers you cannot yet see. Be not jealous of the daffodils in full bloom just a few miles south of Vermont, they came so slowly as to hardly be noticed. Excel in the art of anticipation as you observe closely the tiny buds shuttered tight showing only a speckle of yolk inside. Catch the ephemerals who coatless dare to expose all their beauty in crisp pre-spring sunlight. 

                      My first BB observation this season, 4/6/2022 tricolored bumblebee, bombus ternarius

     

     A rare bumble bee, rare at least for this wet cold April day, approaches you after having come out from under the leaves only to find she too has been hoodwinked by sunshine without warmth. She dives back into her nest to await true spring. That same sunshine beckons birds to sing, wood frogs to chirp, and flowers to gather up the energy to make pollen and nectar.

     After receiving seed catalogs in February it is no easy matter to hold off planting delicate perennials until May. For many months past the turn of mid-winter, Vermonters find the courage and willpower, the fortitude, endurance, and yes patience and understanding that spring in Vermont is not a commodity. It is a rare gem (some say Vermont crafted) that once polished and prepared for presentation strikes out in a flurry of brilliance, a tapestry of green, a popping of color capable of feeding the most cold-starved soul. Be prepared to drink from it, not in moderation, but by gulping from deep dragoon mugs. Dive into the froth of spring about to ferment. Boil if not broil as the temperature reaches, can you stand it, sixty-eight degrees!

     Hook into the fever. We have reeled and pulled, and given back slack, upon tense taut line we have held onto the lunger of spring, she has splashed and taunted us, gave us a good fight, and now finally we have pulled her out of the frozen waters. We have gone fishing for spring in Vermont. The trophy is ours and she is a two-thousand-pound tonner. 

     Maple Creemees and Vermont Spring, there is nothing else like them. Both start out cold and then engulf you with pleasure and delight. 

  

    PS Get a jump on Vermont spring, so ye be ready the day it gets here: Order from the Community Center in Jericho's annual benefit plant sale. Choose from five plant collections for different sun/soil conditions, utilizing mostly Vermont native plants, each offered in two tray sizes, 9 plants or 21 plants. See ordering details here.    

Bernie

Connecting Community with Nature