The Voice of Spring in the Red River Valley

Her hair was a mess and mud covered every bit of her clothes. She held a tray of neatly quartered sandwiches, single slices of bologna and cheese on white bread. There were a hundred, maybe a thousand, of us in her backyard, slinging sandbags from street to riverside.

We paused to take the food, told her thank you and smiled as she moved down the line. We were oddly glad to be there. It was one of the sweetest things I've ever seen.

Spring is the sweetest season. The snow is gone, or nearly so, and ice is leaving the lakes. Tulips and daffodils emerge. It's also often dangerous and sometimes lethal. Spring in the Red River Valley is flood season, tornado season, blizzard season, the season for early lemonade stands and freshly tuned bicycles.

Spring in the Red River Valley is flood season, tornado season, blizzard season, the season for early lemonade stands and freshly tuned bicycles. – W. Scott Olsen

More than anything, spring is an inhalation. Spring is that moment when a friend leans close to whisper. The news could be joy or pain, it really doesn't matter. This is a moment of trust. Spring is that moment between breath and voice.

South of town, down a gravel road and a banked turn, Lisa Grindberg, production manager for Baker Nursery, overseas the hope of spring. This is her busy season. Inside the several greenhouses, her crew hand-cares more than 76,000 annuals, herbs and vegetables from seed to sprout. A different crew does perennials, another 1,200 plants by hand.

A month from now her work will appear in town. A month after that, her work will fill porches and decks and brighten the lingering evenings.

"I enjoy my work absolutely," she says. "It's completely different than selling. I get to watch them from seed, like your babies until you send them on their way."

Rod Eggiman, Moorhead city forester, goes over lists of linden, maple, hybrid elm, honey locust, Kentucky coffee tree, alder and birch. Very soon his crew will finish trimming and move into planting. Last year, 251 trees found homes in new subdivisions; 364 new trees appeared in parks and boulevards. Riverkeepers planted 1,600 bare-root riparian trees and shrubs. "Variety is everything," he says. Variety needs to be thought out and planned.

Mark Williams, Fargo Public Works service manager, is thinking about sandbags. "Two million," he says. "We have 2 million empty sandbags in storage right now."

Happily, this is not a flood year.

"Public works is weather dependent," he continues. "We're constantly watching weather."

"We're shifting gears now and we've been out full bore since last week sweeping. Roads haven't been touched since last fall so it's pretty messy. We're hammering it pretty hard."

The freeze is over so his crew is cleaning streets, cleaning concrete islands, jetting 125 miles of sanitary sewer, removing snow fences. "Think spring cleanup on a city-wide scale," he says.

The city mows the equivalent of 1,000 acres of land and although it's too early to mow, now is the time to get the equipment ready. Now is also the time for road repair, a time to fill the holes and patch the cracks. "We just got a load of CRS2," he says. "That's the oil mix that's more permanent than the cold mix."

Planning is everything. North of town, the Stromstad brothers farm wheat and soybeans near Beltrami, Minn. "Final spring preparations," Darin tells me. "We're doing tune-ups and checking the tractors, the tillage equipment, the air-seeder. It all depends on the rain, on the moisture we get. But we could be looking at the second or third week of April for a seeding of wheat. We want to be ready if the moisture is there."

It's only March, but so far it's warm, much warmer than usual. Runners greet each other as they cross the pedestrian bridge between Gooseberry and Lindenwood parks. Young couples push strollers on an evening walk. The river is opening. There are wedding pictures at the Island Park gazebo. Everyone is happy. Soccer fields and baseball diamonds invite early play.

It could all change in a day or in an hour. Our coats, our mittens, our knee-high Wellington boots are never very far away.

It's no longer winter. It's not yet summer. The voice of spring is hope and promise, both good news and trouble.

Like a friend leaning close to share a secret, we welcome the news.

This essay by Concordia English professor and author W. Scott Olsen was first published to InForum.com on March 21, 2016.