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A Cape Cod Notebook can be heard every Tuesday morning at 8:45am and afternoon at 5:45pm.It's commentary on the unique people, wildlife, and environment of our coastal region.A Cape Cod Notebook commentators include:Robert Finch, a nature writer living in Wellfleet who created, 'A Cape Cod Notebook.' It won the 2006 New England Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Radio Writing.

March, the In-between Time, Brings a Test of Patience

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This is the waiting time, the in-between time, when the advancing sun tells us that the back of this endless winter is broken, but the concrete signs of spring are still far and wee: a few ghost-like calls of clustered peepers in the bogs; the sole cardinal or a Carolina wren’s strident song, the first scattered flashes of daffodil sprouts on a still-sere hillside.

Spring has officially taken possession of our land this week. Temperatures stay up above 40 at night, a southwest wind roars like a black river around the house, and the new moon sails higher, fuller, and later each night through the bedroom window. Winter’s melted snow waters the earth in rivulets. In the bog at the bottom of the kettle hole the last of the old ice lies under a half foot of new meltwater, yellowed and rotten like moldy cheese. The water is as sweet and clear to the taste, though as yet nothing moves on its surface but the fingers of the wind.

Early spring is a time of disappointment and impatience, especially here, where the ocean is so reluctant to cool down during our long, warm autumns, but now just as stubbornly resists giving up the chill of winter. Our trees still show no sign of greening, or yellowing, or red-budding. Their limbs and twigs seem somehow even more bare than they did a month ago when we had no expectations of them. There is an unsettling sense of openness at this season. The climbing sun creates more space, shortening winter’s long shadows, so that we are more aware of the inadequacy of the few visual and audible signs of the new season to fill it up. The land lags behind the light here and the high sun makes everything look tardy.

Part of this sense of emptiness comes from the unmuffling of our senses, as we slough off our winter coats, hats, scarves, gloves, boots, parkas, sweaters, and long johns. Our newly-exposed flesh is more open to sounds, sights, touch, and smell, but that only makes us more aware of the dearth as yet of things to fill up our expectations. We long to exercise our newly-minted senses. Having molted our wintery filters, we want to gorge on this openness, feast on this new sharpness of perception.  We want to hold the newly-unfrozen soil in our palms, to crush and smell its earthy perfume.

Early spring is the time of awakening, not just of the earth’s plants and animals, but of ourselves as well. We become aware, not just of what is around us, but of ourselves, as individuals. At this season every creature becomes sharply self-aware, asserting its distinct identity through song or display, sheer joy or rapt emergence. We want to sacrifice ourselves to the season’s newness, to be scarred and bruised again by direct contact with the earth, for we somehow already sense that summer will come soon enough with its heavy warmth and thick foliage, cloaking and muffling the known world, shutting us up inside ourselves once again.

Robert Finch is a nature writer living in Wellfleet. 'A Cape Cod Notebook' won the 2006 New England Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Radio Writing.