Ah, Spring!

Spring brings a primer of voices I used to know. As they return, I need a little time to successfully connect the familiar, welcome calls and songs with their makers. The Bluebirds were easy; their throaty chirrrups are unmistakable—as are the Killdeer, who cry down from above, on the wing all the time until they mate and come down to live in the grasses. But this morning I woke to a tiny glass bell struck softly three quick times outside our bedroom window, and I can only wonder.

Alison has only three more weekends of training before she runs her first fifty-miler (at McNaughton Park in Illinois). On Saturday morning, with some ice patches still in the shadiest places, she and her friend Mel discovered the sought-after steepness of Bundy Hill, a few miles north of here. Apparently there was sufficient ambiguity in the meaning of the large blue metal gate across a two-track leading into the woods and up the Hill that they could safely conclude, “Oh, let’s run up there.” Six hours and forty-five minutes later, she returned home and without any ankle problems (which have threatened recently to return). Three more long training runs to go.

Yesterday was a sunny Sunday of sixty degrees and the river in its banks. Spring is upon us, for the birds they tell me so.