Closing The Book On Winter
It happens sometime in early April, though it doesn't care much about the calendar. Could be the first week or could be the last. It depends on the kind of spring it's been up here.But whenever it happens, you know.You step outside and the air still has that bite to it. It's not winter, but it’s not warm either.And then you hear it…The world sounds different.The peepers.
And somehow, impossibly, it's the most welcome sound you've heard in six months.
There's something about the timing that matters.
By April you've earned this…And the waiting is finally over.
The lake is still weeks from being swimmable and the blackflies haven't even started yet. The boats are still stacked in the yard, but the peepers don't care about any of that. They heard something in the ground, in the water, in the temperature of the air, and they decided: It's time.
They're sure of it. More sure than you are, probably.
There's something deeply reassuring about that. Standing in the cool evening listening to ten thousand tiny frogs scream their certainty into the night, “Winter is over!”
They're not asking…They're not hedging…They're telling you.
It gets you. Every time.
Whether you've been hearing it your whole life or this is your first spring up here, it doesn't matter, when the peepers start, you stop what you're doing and just stand there, listening like it's somehow the first time all over again.
It's not rational, and you know that. You know what they are. Just frogs in a swamp doing what frogs do, carrying on for a few weeks until the mating season winds down and they vanish back into the forest floor like they were never there. You know all of this, and it doesn't change a thing.
Because something about that sound puts everything back where it belongs. The lake's coming, and the dock, and the long weekends and late nights and those slow mornings when you don't bother checking the time because it genuinely doesn't matter…The screen door slamming, a boat engine drifting across the water, the first swim, the bonfire, all of it rushing back at once, folded into that one sound if you're still enough to let it in.
The peepers are the opening credits.
Getting that text from a friend, "Peepers started tonight", is the best. Three words that somehow mean more than they should.
It's not something you plan or put in the calendar . It just happens, the same way it happened last year and the year before that and every year going back further than anyone can remember.
The frogs don't know any of this, of course. They're not performing for you or marking the passage of time or welcoming you back to the lake. They're simply doing what they've always done, calling out in the dark, hoping to be heard.
But standing there, listening, you can't help feeling like they're singing for you anyway.
And then, they stop.
It's gradual. The chorus thins over a couple of weeks as the nights get warmer and the sound gets quieter and one evening you walk outside and realize you can’t hear them anymore, except for the occasional little solo “trill”. You're not sure when it happened. You didn't notice the last night.
Nobody ever notices the last night.
By then spring has actually arrived. The leaves are out and the water is warming up. The dock is in and you're busy with all the things you waited all winter to do. And the peepers have slipped away without a goodbye.
They'll be back. They always come back. Same swamp…Same sound…Same feeling.
