In these disruptive coronavirus times, I have been searching for something cheerier. And, of course, I have found it.

All last week I was finding the first signs of spring in the woods and fields and roadsides. I took the path last Friday down Tiasquam Road in West Tisbury to Glimmerglass Pond. En route, I paused to watch the waterfall from the pond tumbling and splashing merrily over the gray rocks. I disturbed a lone goose that had put down on the pond. My presence sent him flying high in the air, his afternoon siesta clearly disrupted. I was sorry about that, but it reminded me of how, not so many years ago, I would sometimes interrupt otters playing in Glimmerglass. I wish they still played there.

But in this overwhelmingly grim period, I was searching for cheery spring signs, not nostalgic recollections.

First, I was on a hunt for the skunk cabbages that are usually erupting at this time of year in the swamp I pass. And, of course, they were there, just discovering, as I was, that spring had come. The green leaves of wild iris were up, too, by the pond’s edge, and the moss carpeting the rocks I climbed over to reach the pond was fresh and soft when I touched it.

Here and there daffodils were readying to burst into bloom.

When I left the woods, I walked up the Panhandle and crossed the field at Sioux Eagle’s, passing the stand of young evergreens planted there. They will be Christmas trees come December.

Anna Alley joined me on my walk and before long we were at the Whiting farm. Allen was out on a tractor, herding his sheep and their new lambs toward their supper. We paused for a brief talk with Lynne and Allen Whiting, carefully distancing ourselves, and learned from Allen that there was water in Parsonage Pond — a rare occurrence in recent years.

On our way back, Anna sighted the first yellow of forsythia in the yard of a summer house. We stopped to pick a few branches to open indoors. I had already brought a few budding daffodils into my dining room to watch them come into full bloom.

As we passed Parsonage Pond, sure enough as Allen had said, there was water shimmering in the pond. And the pinkletinks, a sure harbinger of spring, were starting their evening overture.

On Music street I saw that the lawn at the Ovia house was brightened by specks of blue Scilla Siberica. Further on, at Bird’s field, Kent and Everett Healy were planting alfalfa and grasses for the animals. Sometimes, the family grazes sheep in that field but this year they have kept them at Mermaid Farm on Middle Road. On an earlier jaunt, Anna and I had gone to see the black lambs that are gamboling there.

When I got home, a rabbit was hopping across my backyard and before long I expect there will be a rabbit’s nest somewhere there.

On Sunday came the rain that brought, in the words of William Wordsworth, a “host of golden daffodils” around my apple tree.

Happily, there is nothing that can frighten spring away!