I did not take my coat back to Vassar after spring break. I left it at home because I knew the temperature would soon rise to the point where I no longer needed it. Scientifically, I understood this. I understood that the tilt of the Earth’s axis results in a cyclical fluctuation in average daily temperatures throughout the year in most subtropical biomes, and I had noticed an increase in the frequency of days where I could comfortably venture outside without a jacket. Something, however, was missing from this factual understanding.
At the beginning of spring break, when I traveled from Vassar to my home in Connecticut, the land was still hibernating. Patches of deciduous trees were transparent without leaves. The ground beneath those trees was a mixture of dry dirt and rocks where it was not obscured by leaves that fell last autumn. Patches of grass were dull, dry and unproductive. Nothing moved in that grass. Nothing stirred in the deep of the woods, save for the occasional goose or vulture in a cold, blue sky. When the world sleeps, it looks like it is on death’s door.
I understood, on an abstract level, that this would change. I knew the advent of spring would bring new shades of green and signs of movement to the woods I grew up with, but I had not internalized that knowledge. On some level, it did not feel plausible despite my conscious certainty it would happen. Each year, the transition from winter to spring renders me shocked and awestruck. The silence of winter is persuasive, and each year it convinces me it is here to stay. But it cannot keep up the charade forever.
During the final week I spent at home this spring, I began to notice ladybugs on the trim of one of our windows, the orange shock of their forewings terminating in the stark contrast of a black body. The corners of the pronotum, the plate that covers the top of the thorax, are marked with white patches which resemble the false eyespots of an orca. It is not uncommon for ladybugs to appear early in spring in my experience, though I find it strange that a predator of herbivorous insects would emerge while the plants themselves appear to slumber.
Upon my return to campus, I noticed another ladybug on the windowsill of a classroom. A day or two later, I saw a pair of moths flying low to the ground near Main Building, and the reality finally set in: The land was waking up. This became strikingly clear in the following weeks with the emergence of cellophane bees on campus. These insects are a yearly occurrence in many locales. A swarm regularly appears in my yard at home every year. The bees do not live in hives as one might expect; rather, they live in a loose group and each individual constructs an underground burrow for itself. These burrows resemble anthills with oversized entrances, and groups of them can cover large swaths of flat ground. In this case, the field surrounding Blodgett Hall.
I have observed these bees during two of the three years I have spent at Vassar, and they seem to make a habit of nesting in the same area every year. They are difficult to spot at first, but when I approach their nesting grounds, I notice one burrow, then two, then ten; then my gaze rises and I grasp the full scale of their settlement. Looking longer, I notice them moving between their burrows and nearby flowers. Their tiny bodies are merely silhouettes at this distance, identifiable only by the familiar ways in which they arc through the air just above the grass, weaving a carpet of movement on the lawn. As before, I first notice one, then two, then ten; my eyes adjust and the swarm seems to froth out of the air itself.
A day or two later, as I was leaving Gordon Commons, a bright orange ant crossed the sidewalk in front of me. It was a winter ant, a species known for being active in early spring due to its preference for cold temperatures. The size of the abdomen and shape of the thorax told me it was a female alate, a winged reproductive ant, although it no longer had wings. Male and female alates leave their nests during a specific time frame in what is known as a nuptial flight. Alates from different colonies mate with one another, at which point the males die and the females set out to lay eggs and become queens of their own colonies. Once the queens excavate a burrow, they rarely return to the surface, meaning this ant had, in all likelihood, just recently mated and chewed its wings off, and was searching for a suitable location to start its colony. I was witnessing this creature at one of the most vulnerable points in its life cycle, the moment just before it became the seed of a superorganism.
The transition from winter to spring is an exhilarating time for me. Since returning to campus, I have watched my local swath of the northern hemisphere stir like a great beast. I am watching the land wake up in real time, and it is at once wonderful and disheartening. As the grass flushes a lively shade once more and the canopy grows dense with buds, as animal taxa become active in sequence, I find myself struggling to exist in the moment as much as possible. I have seen this metamorphosis take place 21 times. 21 times I have seen how quickly it ends. I want to drink in the first annual breaths of the great beast. I want to feel its cool exhalations wash over me. I’ve spent the entire winter missing the way that a bumblebee’s legs grip at the petals of a flower, and now that I can witness it for myself, I am terrified that I will allow the moment to pass without adequately absorbing the relief it provides.
As the grass turns greener and the air turns warmer, I will try to savor every moment I can, to wring out of it all the sensory satisfaction I am able to. I want to remember the first morning this year I awoke to birdsong, the first tree to flower, the first insect to cross my path. I will try to take them in with the wide eyes of an infant, spurred on by the knowledge that in a snap each will exist only as a memory, and that there may come a time when their annual return is no longer assured.