“Sometimes it snows in April….” This is a phrase Minnesotans love to throw around this time of year, in a nod to our beloved Prince and the less beloved murkiness of seasons. As I write this, we are two days into April and I’m watching a light flurry of snowflakes skate their way to the ground. It is gloomy and grey. There are tiny peeps of green grass that began their sprouting journey a few weeks ago in a warm spell, and now are covered in the muck and melted snow I usually associate with the month of March. And while I’m glad to have some balance brought to the earth after an alarmingly dry winter, I confess I’m antsy to get outside and enjoy spring.
Not that Minnesota is known for a cohesive spring season. When I lived in Tennessee, I was delighted at the night-and-day switch from winter to spring–tulips blooming, sun shining, warm air everywhere. Here in Minnesota, we go back and forth with thawing and melting, experiencing a third round of winter and many pre-springs.
About this time of year I begin looking for signs of life. Usually my family will tap maple trees around now, but we have plenty of syrup left, and besides, with it being such a dry, warm winter, it’s best to give the trees a year of rest.
But I love cooking sap because it familiarizes me with the state of the seasons after being cooped up all winter. The depths of Minnesota winters often feel like one long stretch of snowy cold, and once everything starts thawing, the minutiae of life become visible once again. Grass peeks through the sloppy snow clumps, robins renew their strains of music, and just the knowledge that it’s warm enough for sap to flow instead of freeze brings a feeling of hope.
Maple syrup time is also a happy marker of time for me because it announces the closeness of other harbingers of spring: soon the morel mushrooms will shoot up through the soil, soon tiny green buds will appear on the fingertips of trees, soon the lilacs will bloom and ramps will crop up.
I love using this framework as a measuring stick of time. It is an inherent measure instead of an external one; a measure that uses itself instead of proposed expectations. Months become guideposts instead of category boxes. We don’t collect sap because it is March; because it is March, we know that it is time to watch for sap. It’s a chain reaction of nature’s blossoming, one that I’ve recently learned is called phenology.
The most basic definition of phenology is that it is “the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life” (Oxford Languages). It’s the language known by those most intimate with the earth, using natural occurrences to posit oneself within the timeline of the seasons. It’s intricate and detailed, using morel mushrooms to know when lilacs will bloom, like understanding linguistics and diction instead of having only a basic vocabulary. Historically, farmers have used this language to know when to start planting. “Native and ornamental plants act as nature’s ‘alarm clock’ by signaling that temperatures and precipitation are optimal for planting,” says the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
This framework leaves room for variations year by year and places us squarely within Wendell Berry’s Great Economy, one that we exist inside of and cannot control.
I’m a beginner at best in understanding the language of the seasons. I’ve begun the habit the past few springs of noting the flowers I see on my walks and putting them in a chronological list in my phone. Snowdrops come before tulips which come before irises which come before honeysuckle….
In a society that lives with one foot in the physical world and all eyes and fingers on a screen, it is devastatingly easy to miss what is in front of us, or to look at something without really seeing it. The United States is built to accommodate cars, and so most of us zoom from one place to the next in a sort of protected time warp, not looking at the earth around us and noticing what is on our path. It takes self awareness and a certain soul dedication to actively observe the silent linguistics of nature.
Like a dark room slowly lit by candle flames, the more plants I learn to identify and the more relationships I recognize, the more the earth feels alive to me, letting me into its teeming life. In Indigenous cultures, it is taken for granted that the earth around us is alive, but in colonized Western spaces, it is taken for granted that the earth is indeed not alive, that it is an inanimate vessel filled with inanimate resources for the taking. I need not remind us all of the damage this mindset causes, the people groups whose environments are destroyed by this relentless taking.
With each flower name I learn, I come to understand its mysterious properties, too. Since the dawn of time, people have turned to plants for assistance and cures, both medicinal and emotional. I often wonder how many countless hours someone (with no technological disruption) spent working with honey, for instance, before discovering its antimicrobial properties, how many people tried numerous natural substances before placing honey on a wound and finding healing. It’s a process of learning that feels nearly impossible now, with internet voices and constantly divided attention. And yet, it is a process I’d like to make familiar to myself.
My therapist recently had me re-begin practicing five minutes per day of mindfulness meditation, of sitting still and focusing on my inhale and exhale and not letting every passing thought stick to my brain. It’s quite difficult, and the more I practice, the more aware I am of how sticky all my thoughts are. It feels tied to my phone scrolling, and I am eager to get back into the garden where there is no rapid stimulation making my mind a sticky mucky mess; only the flowers and vegetables in the soil, only the beetles and worms crawling past my knees, only the world in front of me presenting any information to my thinkaholic brain.
This presence of mind and mystery of linguistics transfers to the kitchen, too. When I understand that asparagus and mushrooms and ramps are the first foods to poke their heads out of the ground, I know that I can cook with them and enjoy their freshness, their maximum energy. And by eating these peak-season foods, I am knowingly participating in the relationship of the seasons, the language of the earth.
The residuals of winter might be clinging to us here in Minnesota, but as I wait for spring, I am not just waiting for sunshine and warmth. I am waiting with my notebook, ready to observe the firsts, to familiarize myself with all the cast in nature’s play. Here is what the Old Farmer’s Almanac recommends looking for:
First bud (of various plants)
First bloom (of various plants)
First animal migration
First appearance of different insects
First emergence of hibernating animals
First amphibian (like spring peepers)
I think looking for firsts is what I enjoy so much about spring. Of course I love switching to lighter jackets and feeling the air come alive and seeing the earth drenched in the yellow glow of sunlight, but I also love the feeling of newness. Like the clock has been reset and I can participate in all of the firsts again. And as each first plant and insect and sound pops up, I learn the vocabulary of a language I hear all the time but don’t fully know.
Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks of this grammar in Braiding Sweetgrass, what she calls the “grammar of animacy.” It is the idea of using language that extends animacy, or life, to more than humans–it extends this animacy to animals and plants, but also to rocks and “mountains and fire and water and places.” I’m talking about giving words to things we don’t have words for, but also about the wordless, the silent language that is only observable through intimacy, like the emotions we express with our eyes and our crossed arms and our smiles and our hand on a shoulder. “To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language,” Kimmerer’s chapter begins.
So even though sometimes it snows in April, this too is part of the secret language of the natural world, with its mysterious rhythms and reminders that we as humans have a lot to observe, much to learn. Like any language, it takes practice, but I am learning. With each Siberian squill, each daffodil, each wild violet I observe as April thaws, I understand the earth around me the tiniest bit better.
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