On the Trails: Spring??

[mouakter13]

The calendar says it is spring and maybe it is here. But several Juneau folks have mentioned that this is the worst spring in their long histories in town.

For a long string of weeks in April and May the skies were dismally gray, the temperatures were quite cool, and there was nearly continuous rain. I know of several people who found that to be depressing. Me too, and I found myself fitting grumpy new words to an old melody: Morose and surly, oft I swore, in language unbecoming…

Yellow violets make cheerful patches of color in the understory. (Photo by Mary F. Willson)
Yellow violets make cheerful patches of color in the understory. (Photo by Mary F. Willson)

But yet, in truth, there have been points of country wise email marketing list brightness and cheer out on the trails (in addition to friendly walkers and their dogs). Here are some of them.

• Yellow violets in decorative clumps at the trailside. The first violets to appear, they are a harbinger of floral things to come.

• Cottonwood leaves bursting from their buds, adding a delicate scent to the breezes. Their yellowish-green color brightens the stands of trees, particularly when they are borne on a gracefully curving branch. In the right light, the young leaves gleam and almost glow in golden tones. They contribute still more variety to the many shades of green that come with springtime.

• Bird song! Ruby-crowned kinglets in the treetops, Pacific wrens in the understory, song sparrows along the brushy edges, red-winged blackbirds in the marshes, and even hermit thrushes sounding off in the forest.

• Robins running back and forth across the trail, stopping to yank a worm from the mud. They are so common that we often write them off as being of no interest. But that’s not fair; it’s fun to watch them interact and robin’s-egg-blue eggshells are beginning to appear.