SUBTLETIES AND CERTAINTIES
Borland, Hal
SUBTLETIES and CERTAINTIES by HAL BORLAND Tf spring arrived with the vernal -¦- equinox, full-blown and suddenly visible, half its importance would be lost. The subtleties and the certainties...
...And the countryman said, "You spend too much time indoors...
...You ought to get out and smell the weather instead of just listening to the radio forecasts...
...Content to be rooted here, not walking north with spring...
...The buds, high above the roots and open to the icy wind, begin to quicken...
...I will not say they know that spring is coming, but they do begin to prepare for it...
...It'll run early," the sugarman said...
...I told him they had...
...But that day the red squirrels were going about their business and the chickadees fluttered around our heads...
...February 22 is only a date on a calendar, after all, and all a tree knows about dates, a sugar maple especially, is summed up in its annual growth rings...
...literally see the slow daily upward climb of green among the trees...
...Half a dozen catkins on one of the alders were partly open...
...I wish I had it...
...A partridge can be as silent as an owl, or it can scare the wits out of you...
...And I was content to be here, sensing the subtleties of spring, no matter how dulled my senses are...
...First beginnings are the time when dreams are born, the visioned shape of great achievement still to come...
...So there on the mountainside, on a raw first day of March, a few alder catkins and a hungry bee gave me a glimpse of April and even of May, when my dooryard will be sweet with pollen and loud with bees...
...It didn't run again for almost two weeks...
...Red squirrels know when the sap is about to begin to run...
...All the way he kept looking at the trees, watching the birds and the squirrels, the little red squirrels especially, and the chickadees...
...My friend knew this was going to happen...
...These didn't scare me, but they certainly startled me...
...Sap did run early...
...My friend, Morris, who has hunted partridges all his life and has forgotten more about them than I shall ever know, tells me he has found such fare in their crops in mid-November, before the deep cold set in...
...I remembered how in April, I can look across the valley at Canaan Mountain, six miles away, and watch spring climb its rugged slopes...
...But first must come the certainty, the belief, the subtle sensing of change and the inevitability of tomorrow...
...I found those tag-ends, of course...
...So I came back down the mountainside content to live with March and await April...
...It figures," he said...
...Eager males, they were already spilling their sperm, just in case there was a ready ovule...
...Here, sensing spring's beginnings...
...A summary of his philosophy of life entitled "Countryman" will be published this month...
...On a raw, gusty January day a year ago I went to the village to do an errand authe hardware store and the clerk, a townsman, said he was getting tired of winter...
...In late February it has the faint smell of rain...
...at the roots of the apple trees, for instance, under a foot of snow and several feet of soil...
...We went up the muddy trail into the woods where even the thaw had not cleared out the snow...
...I must add that two days after the little interchange at the hardware store the January thaw set in...
...Part of it was the noticeable shift of the sun and the different way the shadows lay...
...Among his books are "Sundial of the Seasons," "When the Legends Die," and "This Hill, This Valley...
...Partridges eat buds all through the winter, mostly the tiny buds of birch and aspen...
...I had to go out and look for the March that should be at hand...
...Then, satisfied that all was in order, he led the way out through the woods, roundabout and past a hundred big sugar maples, before we returned to the house...
...Burning pipe tobacco long ago dulled my sense of smell, but even I can detect the difference between an early January snowstorm and one in late February...
...You won't be tapping maHAL BORLAND, the distinguished nature writer, writes the editorials on nature for The New York Times...
...I said that winter was half over and change was in the air...
...The man who bought the spiles could smell, or perhaps sense in some other arcane way, differences that are beyond me...
...And the partridges know it, even though I don't until the partridges tell me...
...They were resident robins, of course, birds that spend the winter here every year...
...It travels only about sixteen miles a day, and when it comes to a hill it slows down even that leisurely pace, climbing only a hundred feet or so a day...
...And I noticed that the spiles were out on display at the hardware store...
...he knew, he sensed it...
...I suspect, though I really do not know, that two things happen...
...I do know that if I cut apple twigs to force in the house before the partridges come down, I get no blossoms...
...But it was there, the obvious sign of change, and anyone within sight of a pasture or a woodland could see it...
...As I am with the partridges...
...But my sugarman friend had his pails out, spiles set in the south side of thirty or forty trees on a south-facing slope...
...I must add this note...
...the sense of consequence would not be there...
...This year January passed up the traditional thaw with scarcely a nod...
...And I had confirmation of my feeling, my sense of change...
...Some people saw other things too, such as robins, about which they made quite a fuss...
...we had to wind our way among the drifts, and he had to shovel room to open the door...
...I was not only content but specially privileged to know the subtleties as well as the certainties and once more to be a part of the eternally miraculous beginning of spring upon the land...
...Chives in the garden will have new shoots, rhubarb will be thrusting up red, crinkly leaves, crocuses will have bloomed and faded, daffodils will be in fat bud...
...Three partridges roared out of the big apple tree beside the woodshed...
...I didn't have to ask why...
...Alder catkins appear in the fall and hang on the twigs all winter, tight as a fist...
...Like so many other things, it is spring's first beginnings that are most exciting...
...Some combination of daylight length, sun's angle, and perhaps even more mysterious matters, penetrates the snow and the soil and informs the roots...
...then, on Washington's birthday itself, the cold and snow came back, and the sap flow ceased...
...Coming down the mountainside I knew that spring was already marching north, somewhere down beyond the horizon, down where the thirty-two-degree isotherm was lapping at the hills of Georgia and lower Carolina, and for a few minutes I wished I were down there to come back with it...
...It ran almost a week early this year...
...it keeps me somewhat in touch with the earth's own truth...
...We went in and he swept out the big, flat pan on its stone fireplace, the evaporator, and scoured it clean...
...But I cherish the fact that I can smell the differences in snow, which most people say has no odor at all...
...It lasted only four days, but, as always, it was a crack in winter's icy door through which we all could get a (® Copyright 1965 by Hal Borland) glimpse of muddy March and burgeoning April...
...but in a tiny pocket on the mountainside, where a seep spring long ago created a pocket-size bog that would fit into our kitchen, I found something else...
...We got our January thaw in mid-February...
...First, at that precise point the buds are enriched with a vital element, perhaps a vitamin, that was not in them until that particular moment...
...Then I saw the reason...
...but the sight of a robin, especially in January, makes people think of spring, even though the thaw ends the next day and winter comes back with a whoop and a dive of the mercury in the thermometer...
...Spring plowing will be under way and every breeze will be rich with the fecund odor of spring...
...Then I almost said, "Thank you" as I watched them rocket toward the woods...
...I want three dozen galvanized spiles...
...the clerk exclaimed...
...It is far better the way it is, as even Plato knew when he said, "The beginning is the most important part of the work...
...pies till March...
...Full-blown spring is a kind of conquest completed...
...A tree measures the seasons and the years, not the days of the month, and sap runs on another schedule...
...But even more important is what happens down at the root of things...
...I didn't see spring, but I did see another of the beginnings of spring...
...A few alder bushes grow in the damp soil there, and when I stopped to look at them I saw a honey bee...
...And, second, the partridges need that vitamin, or whatever is newly present in the buds, and sense the time when it will be there...
...Then I thought that by April the commitment is complete...
...It is one of those subtleties I spoke of, and most of us have to be content with recognizing it when we see it...
...Something vital begins to happen...
...He had been housebound with a cold and the miseries in general, but had recovered enough to go outdoors and "smell the weather," as he said...
...But like all such traditions, it is only approximate...
...After February's last-week spasm of snow and cold I was impatient with a housebound life...
...End of the month's going to be cold, likely as not...
...It has always been the young pioneer who makes the most fascinating history, for he is shaping the future...
...I drove down to see him...
...Morris didn't even have to see those partridges...
...For a few days we had chilly nights and...
...if I cut them after the partridges come, I do get blossoms...
...They had been down eating apple buds, and they had told me that spring was on its way...
...Don't ask me how he knew...
...No bee should have been out that day...
...In fact, it was twenty degrees below zero all through late January and the ice on the river, more than a foot thick, didn't even budge...
...I went up the mountainside, expected to find little more than the tag-ends of winter, the untidy litter out of which spring always builds its green beauty...
...There wasn't a female blossom in sight, but a few of the male catkins had relaxed enough to free a few grains of pollen...
...In early January the snow smells like ice...
...They have a sweet tooth, and at a proper time they nip off twigs which will create taps at which they can drink the first flowing sap...
...I saw subtleties and certainties and I was aware of consequences to come...
...February 22 is the traditional date, in my area...
...He was busy about his own affairs...
...And that bee, perhaps from the wild swarm in one of my sugar maples a quarter of a mile away, had come and found it...
...I didn't see my friend from down the valley, though...
...He had just cleaned his sap buckets and he invited me to go up to the sugaring shed with him...
...It is enough, for me at least, to know that some men still have such knowledge...
...The clerk had to go to the storeroom to get them, but the man got his spiles...
...He was right...
...Spiles...
...to let spring come to me, as it always comes, in the whirr of partridge wings, in the rise of sap in the maple trees, in the first spill of pollen from an alder catkin...
...The first week in February, which was a cold week by all the canons and in no sense springlike, I was startled when I stepped out the kitchen door on a frosty morning...
...But they don't come down to the dooryard for apple buds until something beyond my human understanding begins to happen...
...Two days after the partridges were in the apple tree, Morris telephoned me...
...I found him out in the big woodshed he uses as a storage place and workshop...
...I thought how spring moves north, at a pace which a man on foot can follow even if he is a leisurely walker who likes to stop and look at the trees and listen to the birds...
...But beside the sugar house was a rick of firewood, several cords of it, that he had cut and stacked there back in November...
...Snowbanks shrank, brooks came briefly to life, and here came the resident robins to the dooryards...
...But the early run will be short...
...The clerk was skeptical, but before he could argue the point a countryman from down the valley came in and asked for spiles...
...The chickadees follow the red squirrels, for they too like maple sap and they use the taps the squirrels create...
...They don't mature their pollen and relax their scales to release it until early spring, when the tiny female blossoms open...
...The whole urgency of the apple tree begins to assert itself...
...balmy days, ideal sap weather...
...One advantage of living in a place where a grove of maples is called a sugar bush or a sugar orchard is that you know such countrymen...
...The subtleties and the certainties would be lacking...
...And he asked, "Have the partridges been down to your apple trees yet...
...Spring is not only a beginning, but it has its own beginnings, and every year I am newly aware of my own good fortune in living where I can know them...
...I had a feeling they'd be down for buds about now...
Vol. 29 • April 1965 • No. 4
