Perhaps it's not Nature after all, who teases us. What if it were really that her season of Spring is itself so shy and retiring she hesitates to assert herself in trepidation of the very real possibility that should she enter too soon, Winter will be so aggrieved as to never speak to her again. Some of these seasons, after all, act like prima donnas. We do attribute to Winter grumpy recalcitrance, a bad-tempered unwillingness to leave when his time is up, to move over and make room for the following season that everyone on Earth is so anxious to welcome.

Winter is a resentful, nasty old man.

Spring, a slender, beautiful sprite, on the other hand, is gracious in her generosity, awakening all the elements we so love that Winter's windy cold has sent into temporary suspension, so akin to death itself. The tenderness of Spring is such that she is fully reluctant to cause an old man any further resentment, and so she is careful to await such time as he has succeeded in tiring even himself by his unwanted presence, and finally departs, taking with him his elements that have outlived their time, and we bid farewell to Winter, to ice storms, snowfalls, and extremely cold temperatures.

That time appears to have finally arrived, now that we're halfway through April. Yesterday's temperature bustled up to an incredible 18 degrees Celsius under a wide, blue sky that the sun smiled broadly down upon us from. We were able to free ourselves from jackets and toques, gloves and boots. Oops, scratch the boots; there was still enough snow and ice on the trails, still slippery enough for slides and falls to convince us the boots were still required, reluctantly complete with cleats.

Mourning Cloak

We weren't the only ones out and about in the forest. We came across a very busy Pileated woodpecker and though I tried to snap him in the process of debauching a tree, he was too clever by half, moving to the opposite, unseen side of the tree just as I prepared my camera. We saw, too, small orange butterflies which, if I remember correctly, may be called commas. And also present were the larger, early spring Mourning Cloaks, the sun throwing their shadows as they flitted through the trees.