The optimism of chickadees

For several years, I spent the last weekend of January with a group of men in silent retreat at the Franciscan Centre in Cochrane, Alberta.  The retreat house sat on the north slope of a hill, overlooking a valley, foothills and the mountains (now it also overlooks a sprawling, ugly subdivision).  In the afternoons, I would walk down into the valley and along the creek, or climb the hill.  In some years, the winter wind shredded across the grasslands and the skin like a cheese grater.  But more often than not it seemed -- or now seems in recollection -- the warm air of a Chinook would carry over the hillside, as sweet as biscuits in an oven.  On those afternoon, the chickadees would flit along the wooded slope of the valley,singing out cheerily, "Spring's here, Spring's here."

I heard that song yesterday, while skiing in the South March Highlands.  Here, though, the chickadees seem to add a third, quick syllable to the tune, making it sound to my ears like, "hey cutie, hey cutie."  After a chilling snowstorm on Friday, the sky cleared, the wind dropped, and the temperatures rose to around - 5 C.    About mid-morning, I packed my skis into the car and 30 minutes later pointed them along the trail into the conservation forest.  Only a few people had yet passed.  Almost immediately, I found an untravelled trail, and began to break through pristine powder, ducking beneath snowy pines, and squinting into the sun.  I greeted a porcupine, called out to the ravens and startled a deer.  Soon I unzipped my jacket, and before long I removed my vest.

After a couple of hours, I found a perch on a lichen-encrusted boulder at the edge of a beaver pond on which to eat my lunch.  The chickadees called from cedars behind me.  I could not disagree with them.  With the sun on my face and warming me through my dark jacket, I could almost hear Spring trickling this way.  And why not?  In four or five weeks, the first snowdrops could be erupting through the damp earth; the red-wings could be calling from last year's cattails.  In the city, on the icy sidewalks and slushy streets, with salt-stained cars and trucks rattling over potholes, winter seems endless.  But the chickadees know.