A BREATH AT THAW

IN THE WOODS and over the great plain of the hayfield there are still two to four feet of snow—another year in which I have to snowshoe to the first open water other than that which has been set free in brooks and rivers. In the shrub-swamp compartment of the great alder carr, the slow, steady drift of floodwater from the distant stream and the heat-collecting melange of rampant vegetation combine to erode the ice. The first open water and the first turtles—spotted turtles—appear at the same time, often on the same day, in this small, sedge-crowded first foothold of thaw in a vast landscape still lying beneath a mantle of winter white.

My year within the year, the year of the turtle, begins here. The ice is less than a day off the water. Knowing that I am so near that moment, I step down from ice and snow and wade into the season. I always hold the thought, anticipation-cum-hope, that I will see a turtle in the very act of emerging from hibernation and will recognize it as such. I have come close and perhaps even witnessed it in essence. Certainly I have envisioned it, that astonishing appearance from a half year's darkness, the awakening from that deepest of vertebrate sleeps, the coming forth from mud and intertwined roots and rhizomes of shrubs and sapling red maples anchored on atolls of royal fern mounds into clear, cold water filled with light, and then the critical ascent to open air and the warmth of the sun.

After that near-interminable abiding, it all begins so quickly with the turtles. What are the dreams, if any, between the closing of the eyes in one year and their opening in another? What is this sleep of stillness that can last for half a year, the state of being of all living things, from turtles to alders, that do not migrate or are not active in winter but stay in place and wait? The transformation that at times seems as if it will never happen can take place in surprisingly short order: ice and snow are changed into water, and winter is converted to spring. April completes the work that March began, and the year and the turtles within it are on the move.

Is it possible to truly understand what triggers this, what precise timing arises from an interaction between life and nonliving elements: turtle, mud and water, temperature, time itself? I have long felt that somehow, even in deepest hibernation, turtles always know where the sun is and where their corner of the spinning Earth is in relation to it. What else is involved? How has life, among its countless ideas, or solutions, come to this yet one more remarkable, and in the end unfathomable, expression of itself?

I stand at that great division of the northern year, grateful that the critical place is still here and that I can come here to meet the moment one more time. For many years I have stood at thaw, in water or on shrub and fern mounds, watching for long unmoving spells, thinking I might see that initial movement, the instant of appearance, waiting ... giving something a chance to happen before my eyes.

Could this be it? I do not witness the emergence from the substrate beneath the water, but something catches my peripheral vision, and my head turns involuntarily to see a spotted turtle where a moment before there was none. It must be possible to witness that fraction of time I seek, but the instant is set in so much possible time and space, even on the narrowest edge of thaw in a relatively constricted opening in a shrub swamp.

There is a directness in the slow movements of the turtle across the mucky bottom of one of the channels to the base of a mound formed by royal fern and alder and his subsequent ascent of its slope. There is no cautious pause to look around from just beneath the surface before raising his head above the water nor vigilant scanning after doing so before beginning his climb out of it. The turtle proceeds to haul himself halfway out of the water, extends his neck full length, thrusts back his head, and opens his mouth. His throat bellows out—I am amazed at the extent of it.

After the long, deep elemental breath—I have to think it is his first in nearly six months—I expect the turtle to crawl up onto the mound to bask. But after the turtle lowers his head, he pauses for only several seconds before quickly rotating to his left, slipping from the mound, and beginning to swim away. Once again I am surprised by the turtle's alacrity, by what appears to be a virtually immediate recovery, restoration. Can one breath, no matter how deep—and I have to think that that first breath is taken at times when the tips of the nostrils are just above the surface—take away the effects of an unbreathing winter, a time spent essentially insensate, encased within his shell, withdrawn into his own bones with no external needs while his heart marked the time until thaw at some eight beats per minute? For a moment I think of all the living breaths that have been taken in the world.

I capture the turtle, hold him just long enough to identify him for my notes and also simply to touch him—a naturalist's documentation and my personal experience. Ultimately I cannot justify even the briefest intervention but take him in hand. I cannot fully touch the season until I touch a turtle.