Nature’s Everyday Strength

High tides follow low, the full moon follows the new, the spring ever follows the bitter cold. Nature freely offers us her perspective; the nature writer Hal Borland said, “If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.” So as we pause to make sense of this year’s elections, selectmen, line items and legal battles, we offer a selection of the Gazette’s observations of our natural world from throughout the months of Two Thousand and Ten.

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Last week the freshwater ponds froze and on Sunday Islanders turned out in droves for ice skating and pickup hockey games in the February sunshine, like so many bears emerging from their dens. Spring is still more than a month away, but the days are stronger now and home gardeners have begun to plant their pansies indoors.

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An old French proverb has it that only fools go barefoot in March. There have been days, this March, when temperatures have risen to the 60s, and it has been tempting to shed footwear for a long beach stroll. But last weekend, ferocious winds on Saturday night and early Sunday canceled ferries and downed trees and power lines. Then rain plummeted down, pouring through downspouts, forming great lakes on paved roads and mud patches on dirt roads. There was nothing inviting about walking — barefoot or not — in those rains.

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In spring, there is no need for concert halls. Birds are beginning their courtship now and music is everywhere in the air. Song sparrows, living up to their name, are trilling melodiously, and robins are too. An English old wives’ tale has it that if the robin’s song is long and loud early on spring mornings, it signals rain. Pleasant as it is to hear the robin’s melodies, it would be preferable, so the folklore has it, if the robin sang from the top of a tree — and not too early in the morning. A treetop song is said to be a harbinger of fine weather. Of course American robins may follow different rules.

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Spring arrived early this year — and even more remarkably in a place where the cold ocean water usually has us wearing our fleece pullovers until Memorial Day — it has lingered. The forsythia, daffodils and late narcissi are long gone by, and even tulips (where they can be grown, away from hungry, munching deer) are showing their age. This is the time for fragrant flowers: white lily of the valley is a living carpet along streams and in shady places, and lilacs are crowding dooryards, their heady perfume floating into the kitchen and mingling with the smell of freshly ground coffee in mornings washed by sunlight. The woodlands are full of purple violets and pale green fiddleheads.

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There are often sweet smells in the air these sultry summer days. They cannot allay the heat, of course, but they can — and do — soothe many a temper that is weather-frayed. There is the gentle, subtle fragrance that comes from wild roses on hillsides and beaches and of cultivated, rambler roses on white picket fences. Their country cousin ramblers that bedeck up-Island rail fences, similarly, perfume the rural air.

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The northeaster that blew through the Island this week was right on schedule in this summer of early things: early spring, early dog days of heat and humidity and now an early storm more characteristic of September than August. Slickers and rain boots were pulled out of hiding in coat closets and donned for sloshing through wind-driven rain that fell from the sky in great sheets. It felt good, actually, to wash away the summer dust and spiderwebs that have woven themselves artfully around downspouts and on screened porches.

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Acorns seem to be everywhere on the ground. The squirrels are not yet at work collecting provisions to get them through the long Island winter. The fable of the ant and the grasshopper extols the virtues of planning ahead, but perhaps, at this moment, the squirrels know best. Although cooler air greets us each morning, it is wise to remember summer has just ended. There is no need to do anything quite yet. Far better to remain suspended for a while, like our planet, before tilting toward the next phase of life.

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Fall is when we enjoy the fruits of a summer’s labor tending to our summer visitors. The demanding clients and traffic-snarling shoppers have departed but there are still day-trippers to occupy shopkeepers and tour guides. Mostly, though, now is when we enjoy a slower pace and more comfortable bank balances. Scalloping season starts, beach guards are gone, and game swimmers keep plunging into bracing waters.

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Scallopers on their family permits were out last weekend, the first they could be in most Island ponds, mostly without gloves. Snug and miraculously dry inside waders, they appeared like a sudden migration of sea creatures, in clumps, cheek-by-jowelly dipnet, but there were scallops enough for all to get their fill from the Lagoon Pond. The sound of quietly snapping shells traveled into truck beds and turned to the sound of lip-smacking around tables as Vineyarders revelled in feeding themselves so well. Living local was the Island way long before it was a marketing slogan.

It was a good Island summer and a lovely autumn. It’s going to get tougher, most Islanders know from experience. But the simplest pleasures will be more plentiful. These are the seasons when year-rounders enjoy selfishly much of what others come here to enjoy on their vacations — time for family, friends, books, walking, watching the world move slowly enough really to appreciate each moment. When we come together as a community in these months, they are the warmest of all.