The Spring Thaw Begins

My son Philip edges close to the cliff

Today, my husband Denis, son Philip, and I hiked up the Spring Trail in Moreau Lake State Park to a rocky outcropping overlooking the Hudson valley, the Adirondacks to the north standing out in clear profile against a radiant blue sky.  It was 15 degrees this morning, and tonight we're supposed to get more snow.  But the signs are everywhere that this snow and cold are just winter's last gasps.  The south-facing slopes are bare now, basking in the each-day-higher sun.  Patches of green appear, and even though they're the always-green mosses and leaves -- wintergreen, partridge berry, trailing arbutus -- they lend the look of new growth to the forest floor.  But the surest signs of spring are the sounds:  the birds are singing their love calls in earnest, and all around are the drips and plinks and trickles and splashes and babbles of melting ice.

I know, I know.  We could get socked again, as we often do in March, with a two- or three-foot snowfall.  But so what?  That sun up there is like a growing boy with a huge appetite for snow.  It won't last long.

I think the sky is never so blue as in winter