Waiting, Waiting...

Ouabache Trails Park

Knox County, Indiana

March 1, 2013

Where I live, so many people do not like winter, and complain about it all the way through. But, I love winter – the dark skeletons of trees against a fresh coating of snow, the steel blue sky, seeing the lay of the land, the calm and quietude, and that nip in the air that keeps me feeling awake and alive. I appreciate that, for a whole season, I will not feel hot.

I hear many people say, “I can't wait 'til spring” or “Spring can't come soon enough for me!” Or, they pose a question: “I can't wait for spring, can you?” I don't think they like my answer. It's not the agreement they expect.

The answer is: I can wait. All in good time. It will be here soon enough. It will be here when it's here. Frankly, spring means the start of an awful lot more work for me, and I am not ready yet. I can put it off longer. I have much yet to do before then. Let me catch my breath.

 Wild Hydrangea

I do love, though, to go into the woods and find signs of spring, those latent forms almost hidden. While others are complaining that spring can't come soon enough, I'm out there discovering that it is, indeed, here. In fact, it has been here all winter, and winter has been here all summer. It's all in the cycle.

On the first day of March, I went to the woods at Ouabache Trails Park to explore, to look beside old logs, into creeks, under the blanket of brown leaves, on the sides of trees, and overhead. In the distance, Barred Owls called to one another, one starting with the classic call “Whoo...whoo...whoo...whoo..WHAAooo...” and another answering in a more highly pitched voice, in some variation. Red-bellied Woodpeckers called in their loud, almost tropical-sounding voices. I heard the repeated terse, nasal calls of the White-breasted Nuthatches. The late winter acrid perfume of decaying leaves was carried on the damp breezes.

I went to the wetland first, and the creek that meanders flatly through it. The deer had been there earlier in the morning, pressing hooves into the mud while sipping morning water.

Swollen green flower buds dotted the numerous Spicebush, which last fall were loaded with bright crimson berries.

Red-Headed Woodpeckers, also numerous in the wetland, were active among the stands of dead trees, hammering the wood for insects.

During a very cold day such as this, frogs were burrowed in the mud under standing pools of water, saving energy by greatly slowing their metabolism. On the occasional late winter/early spring warm day, calls of tiny Chorus Frogs will sound here and there from the water, voices like a thumbnail being rubbed across the teeth of a comb.

Crawdads and other burrowing critters have been busy.

A cache of Tulip Tree seeds awaiting possible germination and a bag of spider eggs were protected within the same hole in this rotten old log.

On into the woods …

Fungi were coming back to freshness with this season's wetness.

The Pileated Woodpeckers have been carving out their giant oval holes, searching for delectable ants in the dead wood.

Ebony Spleenwort

Ebony Spleenwort and other ferns were waking up, one species at a time.

Mosses were turning brightest green, in time for St. Patrick's Day. Many were sprouting delicate sporophytes on hair-thin threads, curving out toward the almost-spring moist air. An Ash seed was lodged into the moss, ready as part of a meal for a chipmunk.

New seedlings were taking advantage of any suitable place to sprout, from seed deposited last year by wind or wildlife.

Squirrels have been busy storing up their reserves with acorns and other seeds in preparation for the high-energy season of territorial protection, mating, nest-building and raising young.

 Bladdernut seed pods

Papery brown pods of the Bladdernut shrubs fell to the forest floor last autumn. Eventually, they rotted enough to open and release their seeds to the fertile floor.

Some green plants were beginning to push through the wet brown leaf layer. Some became food for wildlife craving green food after a long winter.

 White Stonecrop 

In Winter is Spring and Summer, and in Summer is Autumn and Winter. Everything waits, but something is always coming for the, in its own good time.