Ottawa woke this morning to a spring snow storm. I looked out the balcony window to the courtyard of my Co-op, where the snow gathered on the thickening red buds of the silver maple. The snow fell straight down in a steady, deliberate sifting of fine flakes, to lie on grey branches, porch railings and telephone wires in tidy lines. It settled on hats and shoulders. It quickly hid the salt-stained, dirty streets of spring with one last immaculate white cloth.
Only two days ago, on Saturday, I heard my first red-winged blackbird of the year. It sang from a planted spruce beside the Corkstown footbridge, where I cross the Rideau Canal at least twice a day. For me, the first trill of a red-winged blackbird marks the real first day of spring. Other birds start singing sooner: the cardinals, the chickadees. But they are unreliable heralds. I've heard optimistic cardinals whistling in the depth of winter, and chickadees singing, "hey cutie" on days in January. But when the red-winged blackbirds begin to stake out their territories, I know that winter has nearly released us -- even if the blackbirds are singing from last year's snow-covered cattails.
I follow the seasons in part because of my job. I provide guidance on environmental planning to City staff, developers and other members of the public. I review and comment on environmental reports. I manage environmental studies. I need to know how the landscape, the watersheds, the flora and fauna change through the seasons, so that I can advise how, where and when to look at them and for them. But I follow the seasons mainly because it brings me closer to the threads of life as they weave through the year. The patterns. The connections. Some buddhists compare a single life to a single thread in a tapestry. It doesn't really begin or end; it just rises sometimes to the surface, where it can be seen. I like that thought. It rings true for me, and I feel it most when I'm outside, reflecting on the cycles and connectedness of things.
I don't talk about these things. I don't know how to talk about them. But I find that I can often write what I cannot speak. I've kept journals before... and misplaced them, or forgotten them. They seem artificial to me, although I love the feel of a solid pen in my fingers and fine paper under my hand. I can never decide if I'm writing for myself or for an audience. I can never settle on my voice. So, this time, I decided to try a blog. I'll be writing for an audience. And my voice... well, I'm hoping that I settle into it.
I'm following a well-travelled trail. Many authors have used the seasons, or sometime just a single season, to provide structure to their observations and thoughts. Thoreau, of course, although I've never actually got around to reading Walden. But I've read Measure of the Year, by Roderick Haig Brown. And I've savored a little-known masterpiece called the peregrine, by j.a. baker.
The latter book describes a winter in Norfolk England in the mid-1960s, which the author spent following peregrine falcons through the countryside. The notes in my yellowing, paperback, Penguin Books printing says that the peregrine was Baker's first book, which he re-wrote five times before submitting. The care shows through his prose, which still astonishes me after three or four readings. I return to it every couple of years, just to enjoy the simple, elegant writing. The first paragraph gives a hint.
"East of my home, the long ridge lies across the skyline like the low hull of a submarine. Above it, the eastern sky is bright with reflections of distant water, and there is a feeling of sails beyond land. Hill trees mass together in a dark-spired forest, but when I move towards them they slowly fan apart, the sky descends between, and they are solitary oaks and elms, each with its own wide territory of winter shadow. The calmness, the solitude of horizons lures me towards them, through them, and on to others. They layer the memory like strata."
If, at some point in this blog, I can evoke the same ancestral memories that Baker's writing evokes in me, then I'll have accomplished my goal. The first day of spring seems a good time to begin.
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