In Other Words
Make like the birds...
Spring arrives on the wings of a billion little brown birds.
Bursting with reproductive glee, those LBB’s flock to your yard at some ungodly a.m. hour and riotously incite you to Stop that sleeping! Prepare for the sunrise! And get that pillow off your head!
It’s the sound of a joyful, full-out mating competition—which is always fun—and finding and/or renovating a home for the kids, which, while not as much fun as the mating business, is at least as interesting as the trip into town. Spring cleaning and renovations are throwbacks to an earlier biological clock. As a species, we can now give birth at any time, but we only seriously prepare for it when the weather is good.
Since most of my babies were born in summer, the sound of birds fooling around in the morning makes me all nesty. It recalls the feeling of life waking inside me. The feathered hormones chirping outside my window bring back the baby feet kicking upside my bladder. It makes me all warm and fuzzy. It also makes me want to get up and go pee.
Speaking of hormones, what wouldn’t you give to be a teenager in spring? Some people I know would rather eat their ovaries than relive any portion of their adolescence. Fortunately, I’m not so many years removed from that era that I can’t recall stretching out on a blanket in the sun, blades of grass poking my back through my shirt. Hands under my head. Rays on my face. Breeze in my hair. Ants in my pants.
Spring is when we’re most adventurous, the time we try new things. Like oysters. Like sex. Like traveling to Tibet.
Or, we could try fly-fishing, if we can find a piece of open water with fish in it. Or we could just practice casting. Fly-fishing sounds attractive to me because when I fish the ‘regular’ way, all I catch is the gunk on the bottom of the river. Kudos to Heather Ramsay for investigating the to’s and fro’s of the esoteric sport.
Gardening sounds interesting, if we can sit on our hands until the end of May when frost is theoretically unlikely (we can only hope). Neophytes like myself—and unless you’ve gardened for about 50 years up here, you’re still a neophyte thanks to climate change—are always on the lookout for the easy, time-tested beauties. If your thumb is only green from envy at your neighbour’s gorgeous garden (or purple from sitting on it), check out Larissa’s garden tips.
Or, how about working out the kinks and hiking a new corner of our northern backyard? The Chilkoot trail sounds interesting. (I thought the Chilkoot Trail was in the Chilcotin. Darryl Oakley, author of the story “High Adventure on the Chilkoot Trail,” ]patiently set me straight on that one.) In fact, now’s a great time to start organizing our summer explorations. This year, I’m voting for the Edziza lava beds. Fort Saint James is also highly recommended. Maybe another train trip to Prince Rupert!
And then there’s singing in a bar band. Can you ever be too old to pull on the spandex, leap on stage and pump out, “I… wanna rock and roll all ni-i-ight! And par-ty ev-e-r-y day!”
Except for the spandex bar band experience—which might get you ridiculed or even pummeled—trying new things keeps you young. It could make you new friends, and keep the old ones guessing. When it comes to trying on something new, the chicks (and guys) at Northword Magazine are all over it.
We’re breezing into spring with a new look that better reflects our personality. Marketing folks might call it ‘branding.’ I prefer to think of it as “representing”: metaphorically showing our readers who we really are.
Visually, we’re big. Open. Accessible. Not too cute, but pretty enough to look at for a while.
Attitudinally, we’re a bit cheeky. Somewhat serious. Always curious.
Philosophically, we’re like the bird in the Chinese proverb: A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Our song is sung between the covers of our magazine and our inspiration is all around us.
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