Notes from Home: A Bridge Between Seasons

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade.”

~Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Growing up in Minnesota, I loved turning the calendar page to March. Like a bridge between seasons, the third month of the year meant that the bitter-cold winds of winter would soon be pushed aside for the balmier breezes of spring. The snow would slowly transform itself into melting puddles of water – a sound I still can hear as clearly as if I were still living there.

Here in California, the seasonal bridge is more subtle and far less dramatic than its Midwestern counterpart. But it’s still a bridge, just the same. March tiptoes in, and suddenly you see something blooming that you could swear wasn’t there the day before.

I’ve had a serious case of spring fever these past couple of weeks and decided I need a change of walking venue beyond the usual sights and sounds of our neighborhood. Early Saturday morning, Herb and I head a few miles north to the San Elijo Lagoon Ecological Reserve in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, a beach community in the city of Encinitas.

Spread over almost 1,000 acres, San Elijo Reserve is a shallow-water estuary that was formed where two creeks – Escondido and La Orilla – meet the Pacific Ocean. Miles of trails wind along marshes, freshwater areas and other wetland habitats. Twice a day, tides cover the landscape with salt water, leaving behind food for shorebirds and ducks. The habitat is an “intersection of land and ocean,” as the trail map describes.

When we arrive at the trailhead, we notice a few people with cameras and binoculars looking out over one of the bridges that spans the estuary. It turns out to be feeding time for a flock of Great Egrets and some of the other avian residents. The tides must have brought in quite a feast, and the egrets stand in perfect symmetry as if waiting their turns at the rippling dining table.

Back on the trail, we continue on our way, intending to walk a three-mile circular route. Rain from the past week has washed over the landscape, as if painting it with a color called “lovely morning.” Some of the pathways, too, reveal the impact of the storm, their usual dry dirt now a little softer and in some places, patched with mud. But except for Annie’s Canyon, the most challenging section, all trails are open.

San Elijo Reserve is a bit of a dichotomy. It offers the stillness and solitude of the natural world, but it’s enveloped in a sort of white noise hum from cars heading along nearby California Interstate 5. The Pacific Ocean lies just beyond its western border, with neighborhoods of homes to its north and south. And yet when you’re here, it’s as if the surrounding area fades into the background, and the scenery along the trails takes center stage.

Soon it will be time to turn the calendar to April, and these spring fever days of March will be forgotten for another year. Immersing myself in this beautiful habitat was the perfect antidote to my between-season blues. As I stood on that bridge, watching the egrets patiently wait for the right moment to catch their food, I thought about the idea of this time of year as a bridge between seasons.

Maybe it’s a pretty good metaphor after all.