The Way of April

The transition between winter and spring is especially erratic in a northern climate and elevation. One day the temperature reaches sixty degrees F. with a brilliant, cheerful sun. Surely spring has arrived!

The last of the snow melts. The timorous appearance of green in the garden emerges, from perennial chives and thyme, to the clueless garlic blinking through the straw and looking a blanched yellow from the lack of sunlight. After moving the straw, the garlic, too, is a vigorous green the next day.

But a few days later, several inches of snow fall. Dark clouds reign. A distinct chill returns, as do the additional layers of garments just put away for the arrival of spring. But the plants are hardy, patiently waiting as the snow quickly melts in the next day’s moderation, and the garden’s spots of bright green persist, a sign of resilience awaiting true spring.

One spot is, perhaps, not so fortunate. Down the road, concealed behind clumps of trees, a vernal pond has formed, arisen by recent rains and melted snow. Wood frogs and spring peepers have discovered the pool and vocalize loudly. Wood frogs hold their fascinatiopn — they survive the winter by allowing their bodies to freeze! Less dramatically, peepers join the wood frogs in raucous noise-making, celebrating reproduction, and survival until summer, or whenever the pool dries up. Another cold, dark day comes. The pool is silent. Are its denizens still alive? Who can know, until next spring, perhaps.

T. S. Eliot famously wrote, in The Wasteland, that:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Lilacs appear in the hint of warmth that is the transition to spring, but the unexpected return of snow and cold cruelly strikes down their effort. Or is this not the way it always is, only the foolish or the hardy braving the possibility of the cold returning, of the spring wavering in its intent, too tentative to emerge without fear. What psychological type best survives: the extrovert venturing into the world with the possibility of getting struck down, or the introvert watching critically and skeptically, waiting not for one sign or two but for an abundance that will confirm confidence in the world?

Or can the object of our venturing and watching ever be truly understood, ever be fathomed enough to discern a path, a way, a reliable truth?