Coming home

It’s not that I hadn’t been warned – a photo attached to an email Sunday night fully sufficed to do so –but how do you prepare yourself for the return to a season you had foolishly expected not to think about for the next seven months or so?

When I landed in Calgary yesterday afternoon the sky was blue, and a mild breeze lifted my hair on the way to the small plane that was to take me to Edmonton – a most beautiful Alberta spring day! To my surprise, things didn’t look and feel much different once I stepped out of the plane 45 minutes later: Edmonton, too, was in spring mode. How nice to hear the hoarse call of the gulls again, to watch their graceful white bodies dance overhead!

My hope that the fifteen centimeters of snow that fell at home on Sunday would be melted was in vain, of course: the further north we got, the whiter the world became. The gravel road was an unattractive mix of mud and slush, but it was quite passable, at least – better than the day before, I’m sure.

Still, spring is not as far away as it appears at first sight. This morning, a soft twitter of bird voices greeted me, voices that hadn’t been there when I left two and a half weeks ago. Dark-eyed Juncos kept the chickadees company at the bird feeder, and three starlings landed on its roof, discussing, it seemed, if they should partake in the feast as well. Their song filled the early morning air, and while it is not as melodious as the robins' it is a beautiful song, nevertheless.

Geese, too, are on the move, little groups of them flying north, and several hawks are back as well. They might ask themselves what made them leave their winter quarters to come back to this, but, like me, they know that it won't last much longer - even if the next winter storm watch is a prominent feature in the weather forecast already!

When it's spring time in Alberta ....