The Turtles of Spring
by John Hicks-Courant
johnhc@TheWorld.com
This has been the coldest winter we’ve had around here in a long time. January failed to offer its annual thaw, and so it marked the first January in more than a decade when I did not make it out on the river. (For the record, Bob Rauseo and Ken Doran paddled from Ballardvale to Central Street in Andover on January 3rd, just before the Big Freeze settled in.) My big green canoe sits upturned in the back corner of our yard, sheltering recently cut firewood. I use it for the rough measurement of snowfall.
My kayak has been resting on the truck rack since my last trip on December 23rd (Ballardvale to Central Street). It lies there frozen and brittle. I’m afraid to move it for fear that I might drop it. (This is not an idle fear; I lost my first kayak when a pine branch fell on it in the winter, shattering the hull.) Bob Rauseo tells me that last month was the coldest January since 1888 and that the last time it was this cold for a month was February of 1935. (Bob’s a lot older than we give him credit for.)
So I sit here at my keyboard in the darkest, coldest days of an unusually inhospitable winter, pining for spring. No, not even spring. What I’m really missing is just plain open water that I can paddle and dive in.
For most people, I suspect, the first real sign of spring is the first sighting of a robin. This is not what I regard as a true indicator of spring. Sometimes the robin appears when there is still snow on the ground and then disappears again for several more weeks.
For me, the real indicators of seasonal passage are the turtles. It is not unusual to see the occasional late turtle basking in the waning sunlight of November. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether those late hibernators survive to the next season, but I like to think that they do. When I no longer see a single turtle on a four-mile paddle, winter has arrived, and I’m grateful for every additional day of flowing river water. When the ice on the river melts in February and March, it will be only a few more weeks before we start seeing the Painted Turtles sluggishly hauling themselves up for some revivifying sunlight. This year, when we see the turtles emerge from their long sleep, we will have a much deeper appreciation for the miracle of their existence.
That is because this year, at 7:00PM on March 4th, at Billerica Town Hall on Boston Road, David M. Carroll will talk about turtles. I attended one of his presentations last year, and I am looking forward to it again. I have the sense that Mr. Carroll also looks to the emergence of turtles for the first real proof of spring’s arrival.
The first chapter of his book The Year of the Turtle: A Natural History begins with these words, dated April 2nd:
The morning after I make the first notation of the season in my journal, which I hope will signal the end of a prolonged winter and the inception of a steady progress in spring, I set out on my first visit to the swamps, the great marsh around a glacial pond and its environs: the small, winding river with its shrub swamps, sedge meadows, swales, sandy turtle-nesting areas, and surrounding fields and wooded hills.
The landscape described above figures prominently in the slides of Mr. Carroll’s presentation. In fact, if you have read his books and admired the prose he writes and pictures he draws, the background of his turtle slides will look familiar.
We invite you all to come to Billerica Town Hall at 7:00PM on March 4th for an enlightening, fascinating presentation about our local turtles. Think of it as a primer for the upcoming spring. You won’t look at turtles the same way again.