Last month, while the rest of the world was burning up during the hottest January on record, it was unseasonably cold here in Middle Tennessee. I walked around my yard exulting at the sharpness in the air, at the cold blue of the daytime sky and the starry brightness at night. After a fall that lingered and lingered, winter was here at last. A real winter.
In the natural order of things, winter keeps trees and woody shrubs in dormancy, their fall-set buds still tightly furled. Winter’s dry air brings a squinting new clarity to the light. From time to time, snow turns every winter-bare branch into a chandelier. But we can’t count on snow anymore. Some years it pours out of the sky and settles in drifts that last for days. Some years there’s none at all.
I rejoice when the natural world is working more or less as it ought, if only in this little pocket of the natural world. It happens so rarely now. Mostly our temperatures run higher than average, sometimes much higher than average. Then a random cold spell, sometimes much colder than average, will have me digging around in the back seat for the coat I haven’t needed in weeks. This kind of boomerang weather is one reason many scientists have stopped referring to “global warming” and adopted “global weirding” in its place. (The atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe has a video series explaining how it works.)
After an unseasonably cold January, February began with highs that were 20 degrees warmer than average. A few days later, we were back to normal February temperatures again. This kind of boomerang weather is called false spring — a day or two of warmth bracketed on either end by cold — and it is a normal phenomenon of winter. Overnight, winter turns into spring, and overnight it turns right back into winter again.
This year false spring blew in on a gust of warmth and birdsong, offering an unexpected chance to dawdle in the mild light. I sat on the back steps and closed my eyes, listening. The birds were singing as if it were April, their songs overlapping, coming from every corner of the yard. I opened Merlin, a free app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that identifies birds by their songs, and it picked up no fewer than 12 bird species, all singing at once.
Robins and crows and flickers were stalking around the yard, gobbling up the insects stirring in the leaf litter. The resident bluebirds, who had spent all winter sticking close together in large extended families, began to quarrel again, preparing to establish territories. One male took up his post on top of the bluebird box and tried very hard to entice his mate, who was watching from the bare branch of a bare maple tree, to look inside.
Historically, false springs were transitory. Now climate change seems to be increasing their frequency and severity, with sometimes disastrous effects for plants and wildlife — and farmers. If a false spring goes on for days and days, the sap will begin to rise in trees and woody shrubs, buds will begin to open, and sleeping perennials will begin to wake. The return of winter will blast into blackness anything that has already begun to bloom. Some of those plants will try again next year. Some will be gone forever.
When a false spring drags on, birds may begin to nest too early, only to have winter come crashing back again. Nestlings need protein, so their diet consists primarily of invertebrates. When a long false spring finally ends and the hard freeze comes, it takes the insects with it, leaving nothing for the birds to feed their babies. (Note to property managers and homeowners: “Mosquito control” services do the same thing: When you use insecticides to kill mosquitoes, you’re killing all other insects nearby, too, and starving — or poisoning — baby birds.)
But worse than a false spring is an actual spring that comes far too early. Our wild neighbors evolved to behave according to seasonal cues, when astronomical spring and meteorological spring are in sync. Migrating birds and butterflies evolved to arrive in ecosystems filled with food. Bees evolved to wake into a world filled with flowers. Birds evolved to nest in a season filled with insects.
I was relieved that this year’s false spring was brief. I was relieved, too, when I checked my bluebird box and found only signs that a family had been taking shelter there on cold nights. The male will once again lay claim to it when true spring arrives, just as he always does, and the female will build a nest while he watches over her, just as she always does. For now, for the first time in a long while, the seasons are holding, keeping everyone safe.
The natural world is under assault — by human beings living thoughtlessly, demanding too little of politicians and businesses; by corporations prizing profits over sustainability, even when climate inaction imperils their own future profits; by “leaders” who claim that nothing is happening and work to suppress all evidence that it is. In this context a breath of spring, not too long and not too short, is a welcome idyll — necessary and necessarily fleeting.
What’s happening in my yard doesn’t say anything about what’s happening in the rest of the country, of course, much less what’s happening in the rest of the world. But I am grateful for it nonetheless. Any sign that nature is working as it ought, however circumscribed and however brief, reminds me to keep faith in the future. Sitting on my back steps in the sunshine on that first warm day in early February, not sure yet whether it was false spring or a real spring arriving dangerously early, I thought of what a wise friend said when I was panicking about the election: “No matter what happens, it’s not the end of the story.”
False spring isn’t meant to last. Perhaps it isn’t meant to do anything. But to me it has always been a welcome reminder, deep in winter, of the promise of new life. As bad as things are, as bad as they might yet get, this is not the end of the story. We don’t know what will happen, but we know this: Even the bitterest winter doesn’t last forever. Spring is coming.
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