Going Forward

I heard it a few evenings ago for the first time this season. We've had an unseasonably warm and spring-like week, and the days are getting noticeably longer. I stood in my shirtsleeves on the front lawn waiting for the pup to do his business and breathed in the fresh country air. It was dusk and the sky was growing dim. I looked across the treeline over the pond noting that despite it beginning to feel like spring, the trees still looked awfully dead. That's when I heard it: the telltale screeching of the Spring Peepers! I remembered last year when I began hearing them and I thought aliens were in our woods waiting for the perfect moment to abduct my family. The sound was odd and eerie as it filled the air.

Shortly after the Peepers quit their peeping for the season, we can fish tadpoles out of the pond and watch them grow into little baby tree frogs.

The snow of the previous week has barely melted and the first sign of Spring has arrived. I suppose it's as good a time as any. Some of the drama of the past six months of my life is finally beginning to fade and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am absolutely positive that the past six months of my life must be quite like how Alice felt when she fell in the rabbit hole. So, as the drama subsides and I pick up the pieces, I look forward with optimism. I am sure that good things lie ahead.

If you've never heard a Spring Peeper, follow this link to the Wikipedia entry and click on the sound byte at the end--the one titled "Collective Spring Peepers Calling" and subtitled "a few hundred in a single pond." That is EXACTLY what our pond and surrounding woods sounds like right now.