The woodpile is a fair measure of our patience with winter. It is running low.

So in these days of March, we wait. We wait for the long icy fingers of arctic air to loosen their grip on the throat of New England. We wait for western winds to roll low thick bats of leaden clouds into the North Atlantic. We wait for corn snow in barn shadows to shrink and expire in one last heave of freeze and thaw. We wait for frost to give ground to growing things that need it now as night and day come into balance for the equinox.

We are not the most impatient of living things, however. The shareholders of the earth’s largest enterprise — photosynthesis — are eager to get started on the renewal and expansion of the northern hemisphere’s biomass, one stem, one leaf, one blossom at a time. The great engine of this huge manufacturing process is just now jump-starting itself with the two-cycle stroke of warm days and cool nights, drawing sweet sap up into the sugar maples, and into every other rooted living thing.

Great Horned Owl

Familiarity rocks the cradle of our sleep. It is why we find it so easy to get a good night’s sleep wrapped in familiar sounds: a distant refrigerator’s hum, the idle squeak of a shutter in the wind, even the quiet murmuring of a dreaming spouse. It’s the odd, out of place sound that wakes us. So when our furnace added an unfamiliar rattle to the monotony of its predawn complaining against the cold last week, I awoke.

Having come to wakefulness reluctantly, I was hoping the situation didn’t require extreme action, like crawling out from under the covers to go investigate. So I diagnosed the problem from afar (correctly as it turned out): sheet metal vibrating near the blower motor. But as I was straining to listen, the thermostat, warmed to its satisfaction, shut off the burner and blower, and the house was left in absolute stillness. Not a sound. No electronic hum, no wind whistling in the window left ajar, no distant traffic, no dream-state commentary from Kate. Just silence… and then, hoo HOO hoo hoo…