Spring arrives in the Piedmont

 I’m not much of a naturalist. My sense of being a lucky witness to beauty overwhelms me, and I forget my scientific questions.

We were walking along the Yellow River, which was yellow from the spring rains, and saw a red maple leaning over the river. It was flame red, all buds, no leaves.

The yellow and red stopped me. We were walking through a forest that was turning green. Green, in spring, is many colors, not one.

Temperatures have been in the 70s each afternoon so the leaves are coming out. A million leafy curtains are going up, hiding things from our view. The world is getting smaller.

A neighbor’s house, just 105 yards away from the window of my study, seemed nearby all winter. I could see it through the bare trees. Now it’s nearly gone.

That’s what living in a forest is like. In winter, you can see. In the spring, the forest closes in around you.

Spring is noisy, as well as beautiful. On the Yellow River, cardinals were discussing territorial claims and a hawk was screaming overhead.

The loudest sound was the chorus of frogs.

Roy Bedichek called them the most vocal of animals — and the most altruistic.

 

There is hardly another form of life which is eaten so freely and with such relish by so many different species. It seems that the frog does not eat to live so much as he lives to be eaten.

 

But I judge that spring has arrived by the song of the lawnmower: one starts, another answers.

 Humans are animals too, and this, to me, is the sign that spring is here.

This year, I heard the first lawnmower on March 14. I heard the second 10 minutes later. It’s only a matter of time before the Wise Woman decrees that I must get out of the easy chair.

• Source: Roy Bedichek, Adventures with a Texas Naturalist; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988, p. 32.