The Harbingers

I forgot what order geese come in, maybe it's different every year, though this year the first was twenty-three flying in V-formation heading up the river valley. But farther north I remember they only came after two other harbingers burst on the frozen white scene: The sugar snow and flow of maple sap.

Sugar snow is snow that has lain all winter and changed to icy crystals; it's not snow at all any more. I first discovered it by kicking the hard, top crust that could almost hold me up. The northerners call it sugar snow because it's the ground covering through which the syrup seekers trudge and break with tractor and wagon wheels in search of the liquid gold. Sugar snow slowly dissolves, sinking into itself like the wicked witch inThe Wizard of Ozand disappears as the syrup season progresses.

The simultaneous harbinger, of course, is the running of the sap itself, the first great labor after the long winter. The one lucky enough to own a sugar bush, a maple tree forest, goes to the woods wondering how this season will fare. He knows the best season is when the trees have their feet in the water and their heads in the sun; when the thaw has begun and leaves ice-water pools around the base of the maples while the warm sun triggers the sap to run. Soon, both the water from the sugar snow and the

sap do run, one giving ruse to the run-off and the other to what we put on pancakes and waffles.

Geese, sugar snow, sap, then the run-off itself, four long-awaited harbingers indeed and all highly welcomed for they promise and bring the new life of Spring.

While the last snow clings to the ground amidst the last flurries, the Crocus cuts through and thrusts toward the sky. How can these beautiful flowers live and grow in the snow? How can the green plants jut higher and higher each day? The observant eye sees how. It sees that snow is not a destroyer but a friend as it insulates the chlorophyll-shaped spears from the still-cold air.

The sharp eye will also see that the green-pierced snow is tunneled like an ant house behind glass by mice who scurry and burrow underneath the cold of the air as they carry on their winter business which sometimes includes girding the bottoms of small trees with their sharp teeth. But all this is beneath the eye. What most of us see is the green Crocus shafts defying winter and heading warmthward.

When the fields are still brown, but scattered by the green of the mint and moss, people become so eager for Spring that they loose awareness of the other harbingers like the Redwing Blackbird in the marsh who jumps from cattail to cattail. The person is more likely to look up one day and say, "Today I saw the first Robin. Spring is sure on the way," as if the redbreast is the first sign of the new season.

And sometime around then the Pussy Willows begin to wear their fuzzy coats, the Crocus is no longer in bloom and even passed to its new stage, the air is warmer and the days longer. For some, the harbinger that signals Spring-Summer is the one that makes music, the frog, spring peeper and tree toad. This is an obvious messenger, for their songs tell us

so. And we remember that he's an amphibian, cold-blooded, so his body temperature is determined by the weather. We know he can't live above ground in cold weather, so when we see him we know Spring really is here.

After the Spring serenaders have enlivened the ditches and ponds, rivers and woods, for the ice has long-since disappeared and swollen the rivers and carried the water downhill, the earth warms even more. Enough that its winter residents scurry upward to live on the surface once again. Which comes first I don't know, but the worm and snake are true, undeniable signs that warm weather is here. These harbingers are guarantees, for now we know the ground won't freeze. And even if the weather on the shallow pools and ponds do freeze slightly and kill the first batch of mosquito larvae twitching on the surface, and maybe even a freak snow flurry or frost comes again, the worm and snake are proof that the warm season is indeed here to stay.

Have you ever walked along the cement sidewalk or road and seen hundreds of drowned and half-dead worms during the Spring rains? Their corpses tell you that the ground was warm enough to send them surfaceward, but also thawed so it could absorb the moisture. As if the rain was a harsh landlord evicting its tenants, the soil takes in too much water and the worms are obliged to squirm out lest they drown in their underground, winter homes.

Once the bugs are out -- we notice the mosquito the most, don't we -- we KNOW warmth is here. We're no longer fooled by the housefly that literally comes out of the woodwork and slugs along the inside window sills during cold winter days. He can come out any day the sun is warm because he's indoors. But when the bugs bite outdoors we know it's safe to put the winter coat away.

The harbingers have done their job.