I caught spring sneaking up on winter while skiing on Lost Lake last Friday morning. It was at the end of a typically cool stretch of early April weather that followed in the wake of our snowstorm of the week before.
The snow on the lake had melted and congealed into the kind of perfect crust that I live for this time of year, so I had been out skate skiing on the lake most mornings over the previous week. This was the first morning, however, that I could feel that winter would soon be giving way. It was the layer of morning fog that first hinted at the change. It shone brilliant white in the early morning sunlight and lay in a thin layer just above the ice, a reaction to the milder breath of spring air that was slowly infiltrating into the North Country and condensing atop the ice and still mostly snow-covered ground.
Just the previous morning, with a temperature in the teens, it had seemed as though winter was still firmly in charge. What a difference a day can make in mid-April.
We see this every year, but it always seems a bit like a miracle, and it isn’t just us humans who sense that the switch has been flipped and the world around us has changed. It was no coincidence that this was the morning that the sandhill cranes returned to Lost Lake Swamp and I could hear their bugling as I made my way along the lake’s muskeg-lined western shore. Robins were back, singing from the birch forest on the high ground along the lake’s north shore. A redwing poked amidst the upturned roots of a tamarack, looking for his breakfast.
And the herring gulls, who have claimed Lost Lake’s only island, a slab of bedrock that hosts nearly 100 breeding pairs each summer, were back in force, calling with excitement, greeting the warmer air as it made its way north on an almost imperceptible southwest breeze.
It made me wonder if this would be my last ski of the season, which is why I lingered a bit on this pleasant morning. While the lake ice was still thick, the forecasted warmup over the weekend and the prospect of some rain, suggested my perfect skiing crust might well be spoiled for the season. But like the sandhill cranes and the herring gulls, I was ready to turn the page, tuck the skis away for the season, and turn to the spring.
We wrapped up our maple sugaring season a bit early this year, with a little over two gallons of rich, amber syrup to show for it, so I was ready to begin spring planting in the greenhouse and leave winter in the rear-view mirror.
I sometimes feel a bit of sympathy for those who live in warmer climates, where the seasonal changes are far less pronounced than the kind we enjoy. How do they experience that morning when spring breathes its first tentative breaths, or when that first slap of crisp and invigorating fall air serves as the impetus to prepare for the long winter ahead? These are remarkable moments and we are so much richer for the opportunity to experience them every year as the seasons turn.