This past weekend, I stepped out onto my porch and heard the most glorious sound.  The delicate yet undulating and overlapping squeaking of spring peepers. 

Officially known as pseudacris crucifer, spring peepers are also defined as chorus frogs.  And that is exactly what they were doing at my Saturday evening concert. 

In this neck of the woods, we haven’t really had any sort of winter to speak of.  The low spot in the sky the sun has hung from has affected me, of course, but it hasn’t been incredibly cold and we had but one (and a half?) snow event(s) all season. 

Still, this harbinger of spring sets the wings of my soul aflutter. 

Just as the little sparrows flitting from porch railing to the bush branches just below my dining room window do.  Coming down the stairs in the early glow of dawn, their chirps sound almost as if they’ve entered the house to say hello.

In the rush of the bus stop, if I tune my ear between the hum of the engine melting the morning frost and the calls of my daughter, I can hear the scree of what must be a juvenile hawk hanging around its nest from last spring.  And in the quiet rush of afternoon wind before the bus comes back, I can pinpoint chirrups high up in the tree tops.

Spring

Nature

Rebirth

Signs

The sigh of the universe

Our own intuition,

If we but step outside, still ourselves, and listen.

Images: Farmers Almanac, Wicked Local, Jonathan Eckerson respectively