Equinox: Signs and Signatures

Margaret watching the creek

Garter Snake Stuffed with Earthworms

Garter Snakes Finding Each Other in the Sun

By Michael Erlewine

A good thermometer for me is photography. When I get too busy or hectic, I find that I do not take photos. They just vanish. As things calm down to a gentle roar, I find myself picking up the camera again. I once again see things I want to photograph. That’s about as good an indicator as I have as to my state of mind.

I am trying to move my life away from the hectic into the peaceful and boring. I will keep posting here on Facebook, but other than that I choose to enter some part of the silence. Of course, I’m waiting for spring to get me outside again. Winter has been, for me, long and not so healthy.

I want to slip into the woods outside and vanish until autumn rolls around again. I’d like to see frogs, toads, turtles, and snakes and discover all over again why Michigan is called a “Water Wonderland.” It happens every year.

Margaret and I went on a woods walk on this spring equinox, and aside from an overflowing creek saw a ‘Mourning Cloak’, one of the few butterflies that overwinters and thus is out early, before the snow is all gone.

We also saw eight garter snakes, also out kind of early in the warm patches of sun following each other around and somehow finding each other.

Garter snakes don’t lay eggs. They are live bearers and mate early, like now. In my lifetime I have seen two huge balls of hundreds of garter snakes in a pile, well, having a ball.

Today is the Spring Equinox.

Here is a video about spring I put together of one of my favorite singers, Robin Lee Berry, a Michigan treasure.

Robin Lee Berry: “Spring Fever”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA4-ybWJ6Uk

Seeing those snakes finding each other in the warm spring sun along the creek and out of the cold wind was encouraging.

[Cell phone photos by me.]

EMAIL Michael@Erlewine.net Note: If you would like to have access to other free books, articles, and videos on these topics, here are the links: StarTypes.com.

As Bodhicitta is so precious,

May those without it now create it,

May those who have it not destroy it,

And may it ever grow and flourish.