“Spring is coming,” they shiver before taking cover in barns and underground burrows.
It is still February - icy, wind-blasted February - when the first chickadees call from the backyard bramble. Then come the robins, hopping between the snowbanks. And finally, sometime early in March, a postal carrier in shorts.
Which is why, no doubt, Missoula takes such delight in the signs of spring: The first chives pushing through the dirt on the south side of the house, the return of bluebirds and bald eagles that ventured south for the winter, the babies discovering their world.
“The first ones are so precious,” naturalist Ellen Knight once said. “Then it becomes a voluptuous thing, with everything emerging and blossoming and singing.”
For years as she presided over the Rock Creek Advisory Council, Knight kept a list on her office door, noting each new sign of spring reported by friends, family and workmates.
March 3: a meadowlark’s song.
March 10: pussywillows on Rattlesnake Drive.
March 17: a big V of geese flying over Mount Sentinel.
“You count your first sunburn,” she advised. “You count the great horned owl in the Rattlesnake. You count the bluebird at Johnnie Stone’s house on Sunset Hill Road.”
Teacher-naturalist Byron Weber counsels friends and students to watch for the less-loved harbingers of spring: the smell of skunk and the return of starlings. They cringe, he said, then start sniffing.
Starlings are the birds seen in silhouette at the tip of Missoula’s oldest cottonwood trees and heard, come spring, whistling for mates and staking out territories.
They aren’t much liked, as birds go, Weber said. But they are reliable as heralds of the season’s change.
Weber’s favorite is the day when baby leaves uncurl on his currant bush, a ritual most often noted around the middle of March. Currant bushes are the first to leaf, and so the first to bloom - and the first to attract flies, bees, butterflies and moths.
“They are the only table that is set,” Weber said one spring. “The insects have only one place to go.”
University of Montana astronomer Diane Friend looks to the dark nighttime sky for word of spring’s arrival.
When she finds Ursa Major, the Big Bear, presiding over the stars, she knows winter is taking leave. “It does exactly what a bear is supposed to do,” she said. “It climbs up out of its den and moves high in the sky.”
Look to the north after nightfall and you’ll find the Big Dipper, which is part of the Big Bear.
Then look south for Leo, the Lion, which appears as a backward question mark (the head, mane and front legs) and a triangle (the rump). As April nears, Mars moves closer to Leo, showing itself a fiery red at dusk.
And don’t neglect the full moons of spring and the signs they portend: the Worm Moon in March, the Grass Moon in April, the Full Flower Moon in May.
Officially, spring arrived in Missoula this year at 11:48 p.m. Wednesday. We have felt, and likely smelled, its proximity as the sun climbed higher in the sky in recent weeks, replacing winter’s darkness with daylight.
On this day, the vernal equinox, the world is in balance, equally light and dark. Spring is here. Summer is on the way.
Sherry Devlin is editor of the Missoulian. Reach her at (406) 523-5250 or by e-mail at sdevlin@missoulian.com.
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