A Deep River Year
April 2,  2014

Last night we heard them.   In one of those marshy areas where life first rises every Spring, the peepers were singing their tiny hearts out.   Here in New England, the annual appearance of Hyla crucifer is one of the surest signs that Spring has come.   These little tree frogs climb out of the muck of their winter habitation and begin their ceremony of love.    They are hard to see, but when you find one, you will know it by the cross streaked across its back (hence the species name crucifer).    In high churches, the crucifer is the person who begins the mass by carrying the cross down the center aisle into the chancel.   In the cathedral of nature, little Hyla crucifer begins the celebration, too, carrying its cross into Spring’s moonlight while filling the night with their song.

There are other signs of Spring abounding now, too.   Monday was the last day of March, and now we are feeling April’s gentle embrace.  The pussy willows are in full tuft, soon to sport the golden pollen which will be carried away by the soft breezes of April.    There are still snowbirds around, but fewer of them.   The inexorable journey northward has begun.   The allure of this season is in my blood.  My great uncle Emil was a Midwestern bachelor farmer.  He could read a change of weather by the feel of the air and the movement of the leaves in the trees, and his garden was planted by the phases of the moon.   Peas were the first into the ground, always in the waxing moon before Easter.   I never disputed this wisdom, because he could make anything grow.   I grow a garden because of him, I think, but I make it a little simpler.   I plant peas the last day of March.

A few weeks ago the prospects of a March planting was not hopeful.   Snow covered the garden, and the sod underneath felt pretty hard.   But this is the miracle, the one that the peepers feel deep in the mud of their cold ponds.   The sun gives life, even when we don’t see that it is happening.   March 31 dawned cold and raw, and soon ice and sleet was falling upon us.   But by afternoon it was done, and the sun peered out.    At five o’clock Phyllis and I stepped into our bedraggled remnant of a garden, turned the earth and crumbled a handful to see if it was dry enough, then raked an area clear enough to press wrinkled seeds of Cascadia peas into the dirt.     I wanted to sing like a peeper.

Peepers and Peas

Such a sound!
High and shrill,
their voices fill the night,
and we pause in the darkness
surrounded by Spring,
senses keen to the scent of awakening.
We are held by this mystery,
the surge of life,
the turning of a clock
that is deep inside the world.
I gather a handful of wrinkled seeds,
press them into the moist earth
and give them to the darkness and light
with a wordless blessing,
believing that they, too,
understand the wild song of peepers
and know that something holy,
like love,
is stirring them to life.

--Timothy Haut, April 2, 2014