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)
But yet, in truth, there have been points of 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.
• Swamp lanterns, the expanded inflorescences of skunk cabbage, are still showy in places, brightening the understory, ditches, and swales.
• The fiddleheads of ferns and the stems of fireweed seem to grow measurably from day to day, ignoring the unfriendly weather.
• An Arctic tern cruised elegantly along the shore, paused briefly, and dove straight down. Lunch was served!
• Big flocks of scoters, mostly surf and white-winged, drifting along the shores. They seem to talk almost as constantly as geese and humans do, but perhaps a bit more quietly.
• A flight of sandpipers over a lagoon, perfectly synchronized and coordinated, turning to flash their pale undersides and turning again to almost merge with the background.
• A tree swallow gathering nesting material, sorting out the coarsest twigs from the more convenient smaller ones.
• A natty white-crowned sparrow foraging in the leaf litter, its bright white head stripes clean and clear.
• A flock of violet-green swallows swirling in rapid circles over a pond, probably foraging on insects emerging from the waters below.
• The “draperies” of Sitka alder catkins, making color at the forest edges. One observer saw them being investigated by a marmot.
• Beach marmots. Usually found in alpine areas, they have also found suitable conditions in talus slopes by some of our rocky beaches. On a recent visit to the Shrine, lots of folks enjoyed seeing them very close to the trail, seeming to pose for photo-ops. They can breed successfully out there, and I’d like to know where their burrows are. The photogenic ones I saw looked small and may have been yearlings.
Readers may have their own points of brightness to add. The important thing is that there ARE some!
