Today, Carlos and I went out to English Bay, our favorite stretch of beach on the island.
It was one of those days where everything feels open. The temperature hovered around 38 degrees, the wind stayed gentle, and the island felt wide and calm and ready to be noticed.
We hadn’t been to this particular beach since the ice began to surround us, and today, we saw it shifting.
Sheets of ice breaking apart, drifting, pressing, turning over one another like a slow, cold tide, as though the ocean itself was quietly rearranging, making space for what comes next.
Standing there, watching it move, I found myself thinking back to yesterday. At a small gathering to welcome spring, someone said it didn’t really feel like spring yet.
And standing there, it felt clear, spring doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it’s something you have to learn to notice.
That’s something I’ve been thinking about lately, and it’s what led me to write about a chorus frog named Pip in my March Wild & Wonder episode, a small creature waiting for the ground to soften, listening for the quiet signs that the season is changing, even when everything still looks quiet on the surface.
And standing there at the edge of the water, it felt clear to me, the signs are here, too.
Not in blossoms or green fields, but in the ice loosening its grip. In the snow buntings flickering across the shoreline, small and bright against the gray and white, moving through on their way north, toward the Arctic where they will nest. In the ground turning to mud, and the familiar routes shifting as the landscape reshapes itself.
Spring here is not sudden. It unfolds.
And if I’m honest, I know this kind of waiting.
Waiting to hear from someone you love.
Waiting for news.
Waiting for connection.
Holding space for things you cannot control, trusting that something is moving forward, even when you cannot yet see the full picture.
And still, the signs continue.
The island is waking up.
Soon there will be seals along the shore, baby reindeer finding their footing, Arctic fox kits tumbling across the tundra, grasses and flowers returning with color and life.
It doesn’t arrive all at once.
But it does.
This is something deeply comforting right now. Even in seasons of waiting, something is already changing beneath the surface. What looks still is often preparing; beauty doesn’t arrive loudly.
Sometimes, it drifts in slowly, like ice breaking apart at the edge of the sea.
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