measure of time
Published April 27, 2008 | 
Spring is here. Not “Spring is Here!!” which of course is plastered on every shop window and auto garage to encourage you to buy a rake or change your oil, no I mean the real spring. The trick of knowing when spring has finally arrived is really based on how you measure time.
For my part I don’t use calendars to pin down spring. The ice coming off the lakes certainly portends to the coming of spring, yet that is not spring. Spring after all is about life. I was thinking about this the other day while walking around a Mirror Lake near Wisconsin Dells. It was warm, the sun was shining and it certainly felt like spring. “So when was the beginning of spring? I wondered to myself. Was it March 21st like the calendars say? Was it that day when the ice finally came off the lake? Was it the day the turkey vultures returned to the hills around the valley where I live? Then I looked down at the ground and realized . . . the first day of spring was about two inches ago.
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3 Responses to measure of time
Love the photography in your blog. Keep up the great work!
when I lived in your part of the country (Rochester, MN) – Spring was the ‘smell’ of thawing along the rivers.
I would head north on weekends, then paddle rivers as they would open up. I remember only getting ‘stopped’ once (in the middle of a paddle down the river – when encountered ice – I think it was the ‘Little Fork’ (northern MN)).
Down here (Jacksonville, FL) – spring is when I can include the ocean on my weekend paddles – without worrying about cold weather gear.
Andy
The smell of thawing in Spring is one of my favorite parts. Fall has a nice smell as well, but we won’t talk about that for awhile.