I love snow and skiing, but after a long winter, I savor the brief, balmy spring days before the mosquitoes start biting. This year we’ve taken many hikes, feeling the bumpy ground gradually softening beneath our soles. We match our footwear to the ascending temperatures and descending precipitation levels, progressing from boots to shoes to sandals as the weather warms, snow sinks and water soaks into the soil. 

On our daily strolls, we note the color continuum of the trees budding then leafing out, a slower, more muted metamorphosis than their brilliant autumn display. One Saturday I strung a hammock between two maples to watch their leaves unfold: tiny stars of red and orange overhead spreading in the sunlight. Our youngest child swung there too, calling it Heaven until little aerial bloodsuckers began attacking in the afternoon shade. Later they chased us home from our walk. Soon I had to untie the hammock and put it away.

Despite our family’s devotion to organic living, one year we cracked, deciding to poison our yard like our pest-free neighbors. Prior to purchasing the recommended brand, I read its label, which warned of toxicity to cats. We have two feline family members and want to keep it that way, so instead we bought portable devices we can keep away from our pets. So far we’ve had promising but limited results.

After trying numerous natural products over the years, we usually default to a seasonal outdoor approach. When bugs are bad, we stick to the lake and road. As early as we can in the fall, through the winter, and as late as we can in the spring, we hike and cross-country ski through the woods. When mosquitoes and ticks are at their worst, we venture into the trees only on our four wheeler, thumb on the throttle, covered in bug suits or copious amounts of Deep Woods DEET. 

On Monday, my husband felt the first tickle of a crawling wood tick. Mosquitoes aren’t buzzing yet, so he’s still creating woodland walking trails. While kicking out a root, he unearthed a golf ball. Like mushrooms and apples the squirrels hang in trees to store for the winter, golf balls show up in random spots on the ground. My husband and our oldest child claim they’re dropped by ravens, an enigmatic explanation nevertheless confirmed by a local woodsman.

My husband’s been making rhubarb juice to clear out room in our freezers for the coming crop. Hot or cold, rhubarb juice is a taste of spring, one I especially crave in the frigid heart of winter. It’s been too dry to hunt morel mushrooms and too early for asparagus, both of which I sauté in butter for a spring treat, along with parsnips. We cover our parsnips in the autumn, harvesting them after the first frost. Cold strengthens their sweetness. Spring potatoes are too sugary for our middle child’s palate, but the rest of us love them. In autumn we pack our potatoes, carrots, beets and rutabagas in sandy soil to overwinter in our makeshift root cellar, basically a hole in the ground. During mild winter and spring weather, we go on a home grocery shopping trip, digging out our produce. The veggies taste freshly picked. We’re still crunching on raw beets and rutabagas but ran out of carrots. Although winter weakens carrots’ flavor, it’s a nice change from pungent fried parsnips. 

My newly-retired husband can now focus on farming instead of teaching, so our main gardens are already tilled and apple trees pruned. I need to tackle the grape arbor but finished nipping the patio rugosa roses. Frost could strike for at least another month, so we’re planting only hardy vegetables like greens and peas. Fall sown garlic shoots are poking through their winter leaf beds. Deer have been sneaking into our garden to eat our surviving spinach, open to the elements and flattened from the recent snow and cold. 

Our dry spring finally turned wet. Creeks and ditches babble with rain runoff. I used to yearn for the cry of returning gulls, but I’m not as desperate for such sounds since our children have grown. Among my favorite spring harbingers are the echoey, prehistoric-like summons of the huge sandhill crane and flutelike downward spiral of the veery, known as one of the most beautiful birdsongs in the world. Though lacking such renown, the fountainous trill of the red-winged blackbird epitomizes spring to me: overflowing with joy. Ruffed grouse drum day and night, pounding palpitations that feel like an escalating extension of our own heartbeats. Near any significant source of standing water, the frantic, unrelenting din of spring peepers, bullfrogs and leopard frogs crescendos to a pulsating chorus of deafening or at least sleep-disturbing levels heard even inside the house. They’ll quiet down in a month or so.

Vibrant blue flowers my mother-in-law gave me last year bloom in my terrace garden. Soon purple crocuses will pop through the dormant grass by my doorstep, then dazzling red tulips like those my grandmother grew. On the wild side, bursts of golden cowslips will line the ditches and lowlands. Our youngest offspring waits for dandelions, sunny hemispheres that signal when she is allowed to go barefoot, walking free as I once did.

The kite-flying breeze, warm and cool by turns, carries the fragrance of earth, leaves, grasses and flowers. Soon our pear tree will bloom, a delicate scent detectable only by burying your nose in the blossoms. Bolder plum and apple flowers, along with the delicious perfume of honeysuckle will follow, but one of my very favorite spring smells is the lake: musky and muddy, yet somehow fresh and refreshing, at least to me. While canoeing its dark, chilling waters, I try not to rush summer’s advent lest I miss spring’s fleeting pleasures. 

Summer is travel, garden and yard work with a generous side of fun, sun and lazy days on the lake. Fall is full of endings and the harried abundance of harvest. Torpid winter tempers its constant threat of extreme cold with the excitement and coziness of snow and Christmas, but spring is the Easter season, a breathless time of hope and life. It’s the opportunity to start. Or start over. If seasons are stages of development, spring is the newborn who’s running off before you know it. If you don’t watch carefully, she gets away too soon.