May, when I awaken from my winter stupor and remember to see and smell and say the names of things — morels popping up through the leafy ground, the smell of ferns unfurling, the names of birds just returning, the thousand shades of green on the hills.

May is when I remember to be a child again digging in dirt, planting.

May is when the steep dark hillside of scouring rush and thorny wild crab-apple trees by the road explodes with white blossoms, as lovely as a Japanese painting, when the wet place along the river grows a garden of Ostrich ferns with brown crusted fiddleheads for dinner, and the meadow rue unfolds its delicate leaves.

May is when I put my arms around the big straight ash trees up in the woods and hug tightly. It is when I relearn the songs of every bird who left me last fall, and the names of flowers that bloom, and ferns that unfurl, and mosses with spore capsules on stalks waiting for the right moment to explode.

May is when I paddleboard on the pond to be with loons and to search for the flowers of bladderworts, when I reconnect with the cold, diving under, baptizing my heathen self, hoping for forgiveness for the messes we have made. It is when we can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning because the little brown dogs and I will walk along the river, and who knows what we may see? The orioles building a hanging nest in the yellow birch, the bobolinks trying, yet again to nest in the thrice-cut hayfields, the whitest white of the male merganser moving downstream like a bobble toy?

Bird songs drown out any thoughts I might have as we walk along the Ompompanoosuc — it is a cacophony out there with the red-eyed vireos and American redstarts and common yellowthroats and soft spoken yellow warblers all singing at once. The little spotted sandpiper screams as he flies just barely over the water.

How does such a little bird have such a strong voice? The tufted titmouse yells his clear loud calls, and the flicker cries as if chased by an eagle. The common yellowthroat relentlessly insists on witchetty-witches, and up in the woods someone is trying to start a lawn mower, but it just won’t start— the beating wings of a ruffed grouse drumming.

In May, the birds sing as if their lives depend on it. Ours do too. May we learn to be loud.

Micki Colbeck is a naturalist and writer. She chairs the Strafford Conservation Commission. Write to her at mjcolbeck@gmail.com