Poor Will's Almanack

When a thaw comes up from the Gulf, it always shatters my cold-weather cabin fever. Thaws crack and dismantle the dark cataract of winter across my vision. Thaws call up childhood and value longings, whisper some ancient truth. I remember one year after a great thaw. I must have been only six or seven years old. I pulled on my rubber boots and went wading in a flooded vacant lot near our house. I looked for fish that could not possibly have been there, and I felt happy in the clear spring-like

Each event in nature always points to other events, one part linked to so many other parts and ultimately to the whole. So the robin chorus that begins this month along the 40th parallel, is a mine from which one might draw out numberless concurrent happenings, all of them together making spring. In this month of the Robin Chorus Moon when robins start their singsong calls in the morning twilight, then pollen forms on pussy willow catkins, and the first mosquito bites. Moths appear at your porch

My home is my observatory. Near winter solstice, the sun comes up just on the other side of the Danielsons’ house across the street (as far south as it ever rises) and it shines in to the north wall of my home office, lies across the bed in the green bedroom. At spring and autumn equinox, the sun rises directly over Lil’s house, through my east windows all the way through my office to the west wall of the hall and the living room and the green bedroom. And at summer solstice, the sunrise over

Today, February 14, is the first day of early spring throughout the Lower Midwest. Although temperatures can be in the 30s almost half the time or even in the 20s, February 14th suddenly offers a 50 percent chance of highs above 40 degrees. And tomorrow, the 15th has the highest incidence of highs in the 50s and 60s of any time so far in February - a full 40 percent of the afternoons reach those levels. That’s the first time since December 15th that the likelihood of mild temperatures has been

Since I came to southwestern Ohio in the late 1970s, I have recorded the dates for many of the earliest snows. There is no scientific method here, but rather a shaping of personal context. The earliest flurries fell on October 5 of 2014. The first snow of almost half a foot came on October 30 of 1993. On November 11, 1984, I made the first snowball of the winter. This year the first snow, about four inches, arrived on December 13. The latest first snow came on December 31, 1998. People sometimes

I walk toward the wetlands near my house, cardinals keeping me company. I reach the swamp that is still frozen over in some places, and I am to free to walk where I want, right up to the clusters of sleek, plump skunk cabbage, red and orange speckled, in the open rivulets, nestled in the cress. More cardinals sing up the ridge and farther down along the river. I hear a blue jay, and the call of a pileated woodpecker. Here in the swamp, in spite of the cold wind and the gray sky and ice, I feel

Winter’s third phase, late winter, is the vestibule to early spring, rousing small mammals to courtship and growing the cardinal mating songs. As the birds call out the end of deepest winter, Lenten roses (hellebores) bloom in the most sheltered microclimates. Among the earliest flowers to blossom, the Lenten rose prophesies precocious aconites and snowdrops, snow crocus and soft violet henbit. Maple sap runs when hellebores bloom, and most of the nation's lambs and kids are born. When you hear

The Sun enters its sign of Aquarius on the 20th, bringing in the last days of deepest winter. Even though the mornings are still so dark, the days are more than a quarter hour longer than they were at Christmas time! And under the frozen coverlet of deep winter, the natural year quickens. As the sun moves into Aquarius, crows start migration. The first flies of the year hatch in the sun. Nighttime excursions of skunks and opossums and raccoons, the prophetic calls of overwintering robins, the

I am tired and the sky is dark and the wind cold against my windows. The powerful perigee moon is turning full, and sundowning closes around me. I mix myself a drink, take a small bowl of Spanish peanuts and settle in by the wood stove. Tonight the fire evokes feelings of closeness and affection, estrangement and sadness, creates a distillation of autumn bonfires from my childhood, the smell of burning leaves, smoke and dusk together; family campfires at the beaches, and then over and over the

Although winter may seem long and gray, its progress slowly unravels spring. A natural calendar offers reassurance that the coldest days of the year will really and truly lead to warmth. Next week, on January 11, the sun rises earlier for the first time since the middle of June. January 23 is the average date of the midwinter thaw. On January 26: Cardinals begin their spring mating songs, and deep winter ends. On the 28th Average temperatures start to rise one degree per week. On February 1: