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Shelter Island Reporter Editorial: The springing of the year

JIM COLLIGAN PHOTO A male wood duck in his spring finery
JIM COLLIGAN PHOTO A male wood duck in his spring finery

The forecaster’s last two snow predictions were wrong  even though it still felt that winter, like a gloomy houseguest, had moved in for good. But spring has sprung, at least according to the calendar, arriving on Monday.

How soon we forget that spring  is, among other things, the season that requires patience to appreciate.

If summer is the season of freedom, autumn the  time of reflection and winter a time to hunker down and count our blessings, then spring is the season of possibility. It’s a time when hope, the virtue Emily Dickinson described as “the thing with feathers that  perches in the soul,” isn’t an abstract concept but something relayed to our senses directly from life.

The feathered things called ospreys will soon announce the season by returning to the Island and will be riding the winds above us, their long, silent flights reminders of long, effortless days to come.

The spring time moveable feasts of the two great western religions, Easter and Passover, are on the way. One commemorates resurrection and renewal; the other celebrates the principle of forging ahead into freedom through the powers of community, faith and justice. These concepts are so deep within most of us that we can’t give words to them, but they are present in our appreciation of the changing seasonal light and trees in bud.

The summer game begins in spring, and Shelter Island School boys baseball and girls softball teams are back in action. The Mets are in Florida for spring training and if there was ever a symbol of the power of hope, the Mets are it. Fans look at  the Amazins roster of green youths and  graying veterans — just one blown-out rotator cuff from new careers as casino greeters — and only see a legendary march to a championship season.

No matter if we stop and linger at an afternoon pick-up game of kids banging a softball against a fresh sky or go to the cathedral-like setting of Yankee Stadium for a game under the lights, we receive an emotion that John Fogerty put into song:  “Well, beat the drum and hold the phone, the sun came out today/We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field.”

But we’ll leave it to Ms. Dickinson to tie a bow on it:
“The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.”