While our springtime in the North Country has been a bit more unpredictable than usual, there’s still the usual spring trend: warmer weather and sunny skies! We’re not the only ones starting to venture out- animals are waking up from hibernation, and we’re starting to see signs of new growth in all our favorite flowers.

It’s spring in the North Country! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the animals… are waking up!

When I think about hibernation, an image of a bear curled up in a cave comes into my mind. The bear is cozy and warm, and when spring finally comes outside, he opens his eyes, yawns, stands up to stretch, and then walks outside like he’s waking up from a long nap. I imagine that all the squirrels and chipmunks and smaller animals do the same thing, too— except they come of out little holes in trees.

It’s spring in the North Country! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the animals… are waking up!

When I think about hibernation, an image of a bear curled up in a cave comes into my mind. The bear is cozy and warm, and when spring finally comes outside, he opens his eyes, yawns, stands up to stretch, and then walks outside like he’s waking up from a long nap. I imagine that all the squirrels and chipmunks and smaller animals do the same thing, too— except they come of out little holes in trees.

It’s spring in the North Country! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the animals… are waking up!

When I think about hibernation, an image of a bear curled up in a cave comes into my mind. The bear is cozy and warm, and when spring finally comes outside, he opens his eyes, yawns, stands up to stretch, and then walks outside like he’s waking up from a long nap. I imagine that all the squirrels and chipmunks and smaller animals do the same thing, too— except they come of out little holes in trees.

When I hear the phrase “trap tree,” an image of Charlie Brown’s kite-eating tree in the Peanuts comic strip comes immediately to mind. But trap trees, or sentinel trees, are meant to nab a much smaller airborne object, the emerald ash borer (EAB).

In Grade 3, a brilliant joke made the rounds. We’d hold up a sheet of blank white paper and announce it was a polar bear in a snowstorm. Genius is relative for kids. But the first time I drove into a whiteout made me realize how accurate that “art” project was. Anything can hide behind a veneer of snow.

Do you love getting outside in the winter? If so, you might just have what it takes to be a North Country Olympian! As winter enthusiasts all around the world prepared to kick off the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, Korea, Nature Up North and the Canton Recreation Department teamed up to challenge North Country residents with a local challenge... the first annual Canton Winter Olympics. 

The good news is that Imperial Forces are losing the battle for planetary dominance. The bad news is that we still play for their team. The British Imperial System of measurement, born in 1824 to help streamline a host of odd units inherited from various cultures, was at the time an improvement. But in 1965, the UK adopted the decimal-based metric system, despite the fact it was invented by the French. Today, metric is universal in science and medicine, and of the 195 nations on Planet Earth, only 2 have yet to abandon the former British system for general commerce: Myanmar and the U.S.

Winter is not a season when many people think about tents, except maybe to be glad they do not live in one. I do have some friends who love winter camping, and the fact they have never extended an invitation is evidence of how much they value our friendship.

Oddly enough, winter is a crucial time to look for signs of forest-tent caterpillars (FTC). In spite of their name, FTC do not weave a silken tent-like nest like the eastern-tent caterpillar and other species of tent caterpillars. The tent-less lifestyle of forest-tent caterpillars makes it harder to spot outbreaks in spring.