Play Date

This is what it looked like down the street from my house in Granby the day after my mid-April birthday. There were wild crocuses on the trail last week. Marmots on the rocks. Pelicans in the pond.

Despite our location in the center of the continent, we have osprey. I was shocked, in March, to hear that the osprey had returned. This is bird of a different ilk than what lived behind my family's house on the Chesapeake Bay. Those shuttered at a mid-summer breeze. And more than once I saw an entire family of osprey babies blown away forever by an afternoon thunderstorm.

Today — only hours until May 1 — it is snowing. It has, in fact, been snowing for the past three days. They say that there is a lot of nitrogen in the spring snow here. It melts quickly, like a shot of red bull to the landscape. The ranchers love it. Overnight, the sagebrush blooms into a fragrant, misty green. (I adore the smell of sagebrush. In my days as a backcountry guide, I used to crush it and rub it all over my skin and clothes to improve the overall impression of one who has not showered in weeks.) The ponds fill with ducks and geese. The grass returns — never to the lush Kentucky green — but to desert green.

I don't know about the nitrogen theory, though it's something I may have to look into further, but I can testify that when we woke up on Thursday there were 8 inches of snow on Scott's car. Under that snow was a layer of red dirt. I am told that is dust carried by the storm from Utah, some 400 miles away.