SPRINGTIME RITUALS

Springtime Rituals           March 13, 2007      Pat /DeKok Spilseth


You can hear it everywhere, the sound of trickling water. Spring is washing away winter’s landscape of gray skies and white, frozen lakes. Like broken eggshells, ice chunks, pushed up and over each another onto the shore, slowly crack and settle among dirty deposits of stringy sod, random stones, woven grass clippings, tree branches, dead bugs and frozen rodent carcasses. Frozen shorelines disintegrate, break off in chunks, and spill into the lake, taking a few inches of shore away from my property each spring.

Sidewalk puddles destroy my shoes as I walk Buddy, my Beagle, on his daily constitutional. Pot holes dug by thundering snowplows and construction trucks have plowed dirty banks and smashed ice chunks, destroying the fragile pavement of our roads around the lake.

My progress is impeded by patches of ice and sink holes big enough for Buddy to disappear into.  He’s oblivious. Buddy doesn’t mind the slick ice or swarming mud. The water puddles clean his paws, lightening his load. Obstacles are a challenge to the mutt. He’s invigorated. He mounts the biggest, dirtiest, plowed chunks on the roadside to see what’s on the other side. It must be like climbing a mountain…because it’s there, the mountain has to be climbed. Buddy plows through, knowing I’ll wipe off his little paws before he enters the house, hoping to avoid muddied paw prints on my hardwood floors and his signature prints on our glass door and windows.

He’s a sniffer and a looker! Spring means smells, intoxicating to my dog. Buddy is literally drunk on smells of the season!

Springtime has me slipping back to earlier days at First Creek and the cold, swift-running, bubbling water among the aged trees of the ski hills. It was a spring ritual to check the frigid temperatures at the creek by putting a toe in the icy stream, then search the woods for fuzzy pussy willows. Martha , my neighborhood buddy from first grade, was the best seeker of the furry gems. We’d bring a jackknife on our adventure to cut the pussy willows, put them in a glass Mason jar for our moms and admire our treasures as they stood in the tall windows of the jailhouse kitchen.

I can feel it in my fingers itching to dig in the garden and smell the green buds sprouting from the trees. I itch to be outdoors. Where did I put my gardening gloves and the plant food? Oh, here they are, stuffed behind my bike with the flat tires.