Here in the Upper Valley, we are fortunate to have all four seasons, five if you count mud season, when no one can drive. How do we know, here in Strafford, where I call home, when one has tipped over into the next?
There is an old saying that you’ve cut enough firewood if you still have half by April. That one is a tricky month, with the sun warming my face one day, and the clouds dropping a foot of snow the next. But May is gentler, with fruit trees blooming and insects waking. There is a day in mid-May when the thermal long johns and wool socks go into the wash and are put away in the cedar chest. Then my cotton short-sleeved tees with ferns and birds come out and are joyously arranged on the shelf. That day is when I tell the little brown dogs winter is over. I’ll get the paddleboard out of storage and strap it to the roof of the car where it will ride for the next five months, coming off and going back on every day so I can explore the nearby pond and ferry myself to a favorite swimming spot.
That day in May when the merganser pair is flying up the Ompompanoosuc and the paddleboard goes on the car and the loon pair are cooing and mating, dragging muddy vegetation up to build a nest, could be the first real day of summer. The water is warm enough for daily swims, painfully freezing at first plunge, then mysteriously lovely. Yes, that day in mid-May is when summer begins.
By June, a gaggle of children have arrived for summer camp. Their hoots and howls fill the air as they charge down to the shore and take to the water in sailboats and kayaks. The loons don’t mind them, nor do I. Their happiness is infectious. The water is warm, and summer has surely arrived. Fishing folks in small boats sit quietly casting lines for trout and bass. Yellow flowers of bladderworts appear like tiny floating orchids by the marsh where red-winged blackbirds and swamp sparrows swoop down into the sedges and reeds to feed their nestlings.
How I wish the deep greens of the hills, the lilies floating on the water, the cerulean blue sky, and the soft air might last forever, but I would need to move to the deep south for that, where I would long for the loons of the north.
One day in August when the children have gone home, the camp falls quiet. Workmen put away the little boats and life jackets and the motorboat is stored in the shed. The loons are feeding their young small silver fish nonstop, fattening them up for the long flight to the salty Atlantic. The merganser chicks have grown large.
September creeps in and the pond grows quiet. Not many fishermen come here now. The water has turned cold, and my swims grow shorter and more prickly. A great blue heron stalks the shore for fish and a kingfisher screams as he flies just over the water’s surface. The nesting birds from the marsh have gone south. There is a splash of yellow in the trees, and the summer breeze has a bite— it feels like Canada. The autumn gods will soon pour paint buckets full of warm colors, paints of the deepest hues, all over the hills to appease us for the long, colorless winter.
One day soon, when the loons have left, I will hear the nasal honking of geese, then looking up, will see V after V. The Canadas are heading south. That day, I will make a fire in the woodstove and close all the windows in the house. I’ll put the paddleboard back into the shed, and then I will tell the LBDs that winter is here, and we must get out our skis and their sweater jackets, and I must pull my warm wool long johns out of the chest once more.
Micki Colbeck is a naturalist and writer. She chairs the Strafford Conservation commission. Write to her at mjcolbeck@gmail.com.