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We are not there yet. This morning there was another hard frost and the larger lakes surrounding Ely have between 20 and 30 inches of ice on their surface still. However, there are signs that spring is coming more swiftly than the shadows are lengthening.
During what has moved from dark evening into golden late afternoon magical moments are unfolding under our noses.
I was out driving again and, measured against those lengthening shadows, I had plenty of daylight left as the minutes passed a quarter after four. I was marking how blue the sky had become after a gray day that had followed more freezing rain and snow that covered everything when we had woken more than 12 hours earlier.
On the way over by Cook to look for antiques and take a bit of a road trip I continued my observational day dreamy driving. When wildlife begins to move in Ely it isn’t really all that subtle if you pay attention. The bird song usually reaches us before we see them, the small mammals (smammals we call em) sound like bears running through the otherwise quiet of the leaf covered floor of the woods if you have the time to sit and be still. In town, you can be enjoying your backyard or front yard for that matter and look up to the sound of blustery blowing and see a whitetail deer (or three). And on the streets down by Highway 1 there’s been visual, photo and video evidence of lynx more than once in the last decade. Depending on the exposure of bird feeders, compost piles and other things, raccoons and black bears don’t mind stopping by for a noisy visit.
Just a few steps into the woods on the fringe of town and around the Superior National Forest the footsteps of wolves, the padding of porcupines, the lumbering of loons, the pointed purposes of pine martins and fishers and mink and otters can be as secretive as they like or as in your face as a common loon call or the warning slap of a beaver’s tail echoing over the surface of the lakes.
Last year’s dried grasses were tall in the ditches that disappeared everything that might lay at their roots, rendering a quick glimpse while driving at speed full of nothing but a sea of golden sunlight reflected off the otherwise dull brownish gray that had weathered winter. The wind blew through it furthering the illusion of current moving through a gold sea.
It seemed to flow out ahead of me into an endless warm afternoon although I still had the heat on in the car.
Out of the glare up ahead against the blue sky a large silhouette of spreading wings appeared and I recognized not a raven, but a bald eagle.
As it circled and we got closer, I could see there were a couple more in the trees and one standing by the edge of the road. Snow white head and yellow beak trained downward, black eyes peering down into the golden ditch.
Their secret was only known to a couple of their turkey vulture cousins who watched from the trees because as we slipped by I could only guess at the roadkill that lay hidden there for supper.
On our return trip to this area, I looked for them again about half past six, but they had abandoned the scraps to ravens and crows. On the passenger side of the car I looked through the window about a quarter mile later to see the black hump of a skunk with her signature white stripe sitting half in, half out of the grass. That side of the road was bordered with a ditch that was flooded and the grasses gave way to reeds and cattails. With a punch of both color and contrast two redwing blackbirds perched on the deteriorating cattails swaying in the now evening wind. Their red and yellow wing bands brought to mind their distinctive “rusty-gate” song that I love to hear while surface casting for pike and smallmouth bass in the spring.
The pièce de résistance of the whole drive could have been missed if I hadn’t first seen those eagles, or been looking for them on the return to Ely, but since I was scanning the treeline before seeing the ravens I was therefore fully attentive to the open sky when he floated like a ghost across the road just above our Jeep.
A great gray owl with a wingspan of close to five feet. He was so close I could see the wind blustering against the fluffy feathers of his body, his large wide spread eyes set in that unmistakable dinner plate shaped head.
It was only a drive before the obvious distraction of the beautiful sunsets we’ve enjoyed all winter, but for me it was more than that. It was a reset; a much needed respite from the heavy coat of the same same that I’m looking forward to shedding soon. The Ojibwe take the owl as harbingers of death, as warnings, or at times, as a spirit of protection. Taking this into consideration I’m taking the sign of the owl crossing our paths as both the death of winter and the significance of spring. We aren’t there yet, but we’re close, and to me with Easter coming, that is no coincidence. Resurrection is almost upon us in more ways than one. God bless and Godspeed toward spring.
