Guest commentary: A time of rebirth - by Peter Trull

I am waiting. It seems from as early as the new year change, I am waiting for spring. I do love the winter here on the Cape, isolated, peaceful, with dormant trees, unstrained beaches, and animals living only to store energy and survive until the days lengthen and the sun's rays become more direct. Mammals in winter here work only as hard as they have to, and sleep the rest of the time. Only the woodchuck, jumping mice and some bat species lie in true hibernation. Skunks, raccoons, opossum, chipmunks and our other well-known mammal neighbors will be active during the dead of winter. For the most part, it's eat, sleep. Many of the birds survive the winter months here as visitors from the far north, where cold is normal. They too, eat, rest, watch and wait.

In the fresh water wetlands here on the Cape, life is also dormant. Reptiles and amphibians are for the most part inactive, as are the myriad of wetland invertebrates, all mixed into or buried snugly beneath muck and leaf litter. A warm day in January or February will bring about arousal of these critters. Painted turtles have been seen and spring peepers heard during every month of the year. The long, low rays of the sun and short photoperiod each day prohibit photosynthesis in most plants. Having lost those food-making factories we call leaves months earlier, plants too, lie dormant.

Until now. It is the tilt of our earth and our geographic location on it that brings about the seasons we constantly look forward too. As the earth revolves around the sun, our position between the equator and the Arctic Circle tilts, or faces, eithertoward the sun (in summer) or away from the sun (in winter). As the earth moves once completely around the sun (a year), at halfway point between the two extremes, June and December, we have the spring equinox in March and the autumnal equinox in September. Equinox literally translated; equal nights. It is the spring equinox that brings about the rebirth, the rejuvenation of our living surroundings that marks an end to the dormancy of winter and the resurgence of life.

Fresh water ponds here on the Cape and Islands, often but not always ice covered in winter, seem to be perfectly synchronized with the movement of the earth around the sun. As days lengthen in March and April, the sun's rays become warmer and more direct each day. As the sun's energy reaches the ground, the pond surface, and the dark layer of decaying leaves in the pond's shallows, things heat up. Dormant creatures begin to stir. From the microscopic copepods and daphnia, up through the realms of the wetland food web, water scorpions, diving and scavenger beetles, the dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, backswimmers and water boatmen, to the frogs, turtles and water snake. All begin to stir on these lengthening, warming days.

The northern cardinal sings its sweet repeated note despite the snow-covered ground, and chickadees begin the familiar two-note whistle of spring. It is not the cold or snow that defines winter or spring; day length, photoperiod, brightens our days and quickens our step.

Stand and face the north, feel the sun on your back; the warm, radiant energy can't be denied. It is the energy of life, of rebirth, rejuvenation... springtime.

Author and naturalist Peter Trull teaches at Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School in Orleans.