If spring is a sign of warming trends, today the weather makes a fool of us all.
Whatever the disputed origins of “April Fool’s Day” — and it seems to be hotly disputed among European sources, ranging from variant markings of the new year to an obscure Chaucer reference to a throwback to Noah’s first attempt to send a dove out to gauge the level of the floodwaters and more — our cultures have our own analogues that relate, I think far more aptly, to climate and weather and season. In our way, it’s neither so personal nor anything like the mean-spiritedness that has grown up around colonial exploitations of April first. Ours have no direct relationship to the Gregorian calendar’s date, for one thing; for another, those who play the role of “fool” in our cultures are tricksters by nature and task, and while they often have uncomfortable truths to teach us, they do not occupy the lesser rungs of a monarchical hierarchy.
In my own people’s way, what’s now widely known as the first day of the month, or moon, of April is in fact one of the days of the waning Snowcrust Moon. Fitting, that, this time of year — even here, although precious little snow or even crust is visible now that the sun has gone to work on the two inches of snow from yesterday evening. We are about to begin a new phase of the moon, though, one whose name varies among my people depending on region: for some, it is the Sugarbushing Moon; for others like my own, the Broken Snowshoe Moon.
The latter’s relationship to trickster-and-fool situations should be obvious, even if it’s more an issue of wear than will. In my homelands, real snow is found well into April, and time was that, after endless cycles of freeze and thaw and freeze again where the snows drift deep, the best way to travel was by snowshoe-clad foot. By this time of the year, of course, the thongs would be wearing as thin as everyone’s patience with the cold and snow, and it would be a common experience to have the break underfoot.
The former name is less obvious, although it, too, contains within its spirit a reference to tricksters and fools. Sugarbushing is, of course, a reference to the harvesting of the sap — in our case, of the maple trees. The old stories tell us of a time when the people could drink the syrup straight from the trunk of the tree, until one day a spirit being, one of whose many aspects is that of a trickster of sorts, sat down beneath a maple to take a nap. He was rudely awakened by a gush of syrup and the subsequent amusement of the woodland creatures. Embarrassed and angry, he decreed that thenceforth, the people would be required to work for the syrup, tapping the trees, draining the sap, boiling and processing it — sugarbushing, in a word. And that is why you cannot drink maple syrup straight from the tree (although we have been known to lick the sap off our fingertips occasionally).
Wings planted a couple of young maple trees here for me, along with a paper birch, so that I would have some of the tree spirits of my own home. In addition to a few weeping willows and one small globe willow, the vast majority of our trees here are aspens and evergreens. The latter group comprise piñon, juniper, and spruce, trees that produce cones and berries and needles, but no leaves in the more traditional sense. The deciduous aspens, though, will leaf fully in another month or two, lush and green.
But for the moment, the aspens are all catkins, beaded with shiny seed capsules that break open to produce a fuzzy ornamentation at the ends of the branches — a bit of softness in a cold blue such as that of this day.
And it is cold. Part of it is relative, of course; last week saw unseasonal highs in the seventies. But mostly it’s simply the nature of the season in these early days: still more winter than summer; chill and damp beneath a wind that still leads with a scalpel’s edge. And in this place, this particular day — April first — almost invariably seems to be one in which the trickster spirits of the weather rule. Sudden snows, quick thaws, gale-force winds, and a cold that stubbornly refuses to release its grip, all are characteristic of the colonial fool’s day that finds us foolishly dreaming of heat waves.
In times such as these, it helps to know that some patterns remain reliable even in the face of all the climate change has wrought. The catkins are one such lodestone, a manifestation on which we can hang our metaphorical hats. They may appear early or late, but they will appear, unquestionably. And when they do, they soften the season’s edges — with hope for a newly colorful world, with faith in the promise of warmer winds.
And that is not foolishness of any sort.
~ Aji
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