Spring, Sprang, Sprung
By Andrew Smith

I've been gonna write about spring since before it got here. But I was busy the day it showed up, and I missed my chance. Then I was gonna write about spring while it was here. But I had to leave town for a couple weeks, and when I got back it felt like summer. So now my goal is to write about spring before winter comes again.

Spring is the great love affair and torment of my life. Walking through the frozen woods, wading through the snow, I live and die for spring, for something green, for something growing. There is no sight that lifts my heart like the vibrant green of new spring grass. No sound as sweet as the gurgle of a creek spilling over with a winters melt. No smell as satisfying as earth warmed again by the sun. Ah, this spring! She's a fine, fine lady. My own true love.

But she's a cruel one too, and she freezes the new chicks in their nests, and burns the tender green buds with ice and sleet, and rips 100 year old branches mercilessly from the trees with her heavy, wet snows. She's stop again, start again, stop again, and drag her feet every inch of the way. She's eighty-five sunny degrees one day, and a snowstorm the next. She's unbearable. I can't stand her.

The first sign of spring in the Black Hills is probably the migration of evening grosbeaks. Sometime towards late March, or early April, you'll here a twittering in the woods. If you follow the sound you may come to a couple old ponderosas covered on every branch with busy yellow-green birds. They're evening grosbeaks, and they're on their way north, but they stop in the Black Hills to gossip for a day or two. And they really make a racket.

Soon after the grosbeaks leave you'll notice that the moss in the woods is more green than you can ever remember seeing it before. While the ground is still frozen, and partly covered in snow, the moss is starting to grow. And I've got to say: I am a great admirer of moss. There is no more tranquil green forest than a miniature one made of moss. In our full sized world we hustle and worry through our days, missing the meaning of any unbusy moment. But the world of moss is shaded, perfect and still, always there, if we but look.

About this same time you may notice a few migrations of geese overhead. Then, a week or so later, you hear the trilling of the cranes as they too head north. And spring seems just around the corner, though everything is, apparently, still frozen in winters sleep.

And for good reason: spring is a tease in the worst sort of way. Just as you're beginning to pull the cobwebs off your memories of barbecue grills, and fishing trips and lawnmowers; here comes winter again. You wake up to a foot of snow and single digit windchills that last a week. And spring seems like a hopeless cause. It surely, never, will come.

This is the cruelest time of year. A taste of spring is like a taste of love, and one cannot be satisfied with a taste. Yet the snows seem to linger on deliberately, in a cold mockery of springtime passion. Winter is great in January, but terrible in April. Go away you foolish old man; go away. Sometimes the sun seems so far away in the sky that it will never melt all that snow.

But all things in their own time. Whoever said watching ice melt was dull never waited half the winter just to see a wave slap the lakeshore again. The way a lake thaws is funny. It could be seventy degrees for weeks in February without making so much as a soft spot in the ice. But in April you notice a few puddles in the lake. Then one day you notice that although the lake is still frozen, there's water showing all the way around the edges. And the next day, all the ice is gone. Just like that.

Once the ice is off the lakes, spring is really on her way. The ground begins to warm and Pasque flowers push up through the tardy snow. The currants are the first to break bud, followed by the chokecherries and serviceberries. The days are long now, which is good, because there's lots to do.

But hold onto your hat, and your snowshovel, 'cause you're not through 'er yet. Just when it seems spring is here to stay, she gives you the cold shoulder and you wake up to, what? Snow?! Again?!

It's this on-again, off-again aspect of spring that I find so tormenting. No love affair can make me as giddy as the sight of fine new leaves on a warm, sunny day; nor drop me into as black despair as the snow and sleet that are sure to follow. A spring snowstorm seems to set time moving backwards, into winter again. And nothing is so dreary as a winter day in the middle of spring. It's agony to my heart.

I recently went on a trip to the east. When I left, only one lone cottonwood was showing a wisp of green in Rapid City. When I returned, the temperature was in the eighties and everything was flowering, growing, and breaking bud in the raptures of spring. On May 7th I shaved my winter beard. On May 8th it snowed.

Yesterday, in the woods around Custer, I noticed that some of the Kinnikinnick was already flowering, and the choke cherries were almost ready to. The tree branches were bent with heavy, wet snow. But it was melting, almost as quickly as it came. The pine buds were beginning to swell. "Soon," I said, "soon."

I am in the agony of spring. It's like being in love. I can't stand it.

But soon.