By Irene Barnard
Irises
Despite a spate of snowstorms it’s clear that winter is passing. Spring is coming, and with it the sun’s rebirth after a season of darkness. Waking from winter’s deep sleep, hibernating animals stir in their dens, and so do we—even with February’s cold! New buds peek through the snow and ice, and animals will soon give birth, as the days grow longer and warmer. Bulbs quicken with the increasing sunlight, and seeds too, under the frozen ground. With the New Year we’ve cleared away winter’s built-up stagnation. We dream of the future in this time of new beginnings, reading weather predictions that foretell of the next growing season. Sowing seeds indoors to jump-start our vegetable and herb garden, we welcome the returning light of the sun. Nature continues its infinite cycle of regeneration.
Needle Ice
After a snowfall, we follow tracks of squirrels, voles, and rabbits down to the Mount Hope River. Judging by the large size and claw marks of prints left on our long, slushy driveway, it seems that coyote paid us a visit. I think of them wandering in the cold, dark night, searching for food amidst the snow flurries, returning to their dens for warmth and the comfort of one another. Other animals like bears survive the cold and dark by hibernation, but some turtles and frogs instead brumate, surviving largely underwater. According to naturalist Jim Sirch’s blog, Beyond Your Back Door, some insects like giant leopard moths also can overwinter, in a process called diapause.
Icy Pond
Our corner of Northeastern Connecticut is home to Joshua’s Trust’s Wolf Rock Preserve—its primary feature a large quartz and gneiss erratic, or glacially deposited nonnative rock. Its ledges of schist, gneiss, and chert cleaved and split off over millions of years, reflecting epochs of glaciation. In fact, this land was once part of the great Laurentide ice sheet, which covered much of northern North America—per UConn geology professor Robert Thorson.
Moss and Lichen on Icy Rock Edge
Icicles drape themselves from these crevices, joining lichen, mosses, and fungi. These and other organisms form symbiotic relationships—for instance between themselves and vascular plants, or between fungi and algae—mutually beneficial to each other.
Moss and Lichen on Boulder
Nearby, the Mount Hope River erodes layers of ice as it rushes through, past, and underneath. Ice forms are reminiscent of landforms like canyons and mesas, and how they too erode over eons. Land is so precious, contested, endangered—now more than ever.
Mount Hope, River of Ice
Indigenous Mohegan and Nipmuc peoples have stewarded this land for generations. They make up our country, together with immigrants—as humans have migrated throughout our history, for tens of thousands of years.
As the proud daughter of an immigrant mother who fiercely loved her new home, I love this land. Joshua’s Trust and similar organizations encourage us all to find ways to work together in our communities to protect the land for future generations.
With creatures like mammals hibernating in the ground or frogs and turtles “sleeping” under the ice and regenerating while keeping safe, or lichen/fungus/moss/vascular plant mutual aid relationships, Nature gives us lessons in survival and helping each other. As with so much else, we need only pay attention, to learn.
