As a person who, by choice, nearly always rusticates in rural places, I strongly identify with the Chippewa designation for this  lunar cycle we're moving into:  Frogs Return Moon.  It was not always the case with me. Frogs were not prominent furnishings of my childhood landscape, except in mid-summer along the creeks.  Many moons later, I took up residence in northern Vermont for a precious interlude of years. The winters were as harsh and unforgiving as anything Wisconsin can visit upon you, even colder and snowier, if you can believe that on the heels of this record-breaking winter assault.  Huddled close to the woodstove in blizzard-battered Vermont, I used to marvel at what I'd read about the earliest European settlers to northern New England -- that they lived in simple, three-sided shelters, with a flap of animal hide hanging across the fourth side to act as a door. How the heck did they keep from freezing to death?, I wondered as I hugged my down-covered ribcage and flexed my numb toes in fleece-lined, arctic-expedition-worthy, knee-high boots. 

The coming of spring in such a clime renders its inhabitants delirious with happiness and relief. And the harbingers of good news  in that frigid place were the "peepers"-- hoards of tiny frogs, appearing out of newly-thawed marsh mud, whose high, deafening ode to joy  always took us by surprise on a grizzled, winter-worn morning sometime in April. It was the acknowledged death knell for Old Man Winter and the sound had an electrifying effect on the beleaguered populace. Steps quickened, spirits soared. The talk at the post office was all about peepers first, the usual town gossip ran an insignificant second. 

Ever since that period, my internal clock waits for the shouts of the peepers. The silent defiance of crocus, daffodils and tulips, thrusting their heads bravely above the soil before the danger of snow is safely past, no longer offers sufficient pizzazz. Bring on the bombast! After skidding around icy corners on one foot like Charlie Chaplin for this interminable glacial age just past, I crave raucous voices heralding Spring, the time  of surer footing. Even mud season is welcome, though the garden turns to glue, but it is not enough that the earth stirs with life, and many things begin to grow again unseen. I desire a ruckus! 

While celebrating the giddy role of frogs in keeping us sane, I am reminded of another interlude in my life, this time out West. My husband and I were volunteers assisting a Forest Service biologist do an inventory of amphibious critters in Sierra lakes and streams. A similar effort had been done ten and twenty years previously, and the USFS wanted an update. The picture was sobering in the extreme. Frogs, especially, were in deep trouble. Not only were the populations greatly reduced over previous counts, but horribly deformed specimens were turning up in disturbing numbers. Some of the causes of mortality were known and obvious -- cattle grazing on public lands, trampling marshy meadows , riparian banks, and the frogs themselves; the release of  frog-gobbling fish (non-native) into  ponds and lakes that were traditionally fishless;  and  pollution from various sources -- but other causes could only be guessed at.  The chief suspects were thinning of the ozone layer (frogs are very sensitive to ultraviolet rays) and climate change.  

Whatever the reasons, these ancient voices of the Sierra have been muffled and are dying out. Apparently, this is true everywhere in the world. Probably here in Wisconsin, as well. As Plutarch said (that canny old Greek philosopher who had such an influence on William Shakespeare), "...boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest." 

My personal favorite of the species has to be the tree frog. Miniature Packer backers, jauntily togged out in gold and green. When we took possession of my parents' century-old ranch house years ago, the window screens were rotten, allowing all manner of small visitors to enter. One extended spring and summer, a tree frog came and went at will, sitting in the kitchen sink or chirping on the window sill. We trained ourselves to check for this little fellow before loading the sink up with dishes or pouring in hot water. I felt chosen. It seemed an honor vastly greater than anything humankind could heap upon me, to be non-threatening to some wild creature other than mosquitoes. Then we replaced the windows and screened nature out -- a dubious improvement, at least in so far as frog friendships were concerned. 

While frogs are not yet croaking here on the ridge or in the valley, nonetheless noisy excitement is in the air.  What can compare with the first stirring cries of the sandhill cranes overhead -- like barking dogs, I thought, the first time I heard them -- returning to their nesting grounds? Or the haunting notes of tundra swans winging past on high, with hundreds of weary miles yet to go before they drop down into the fields of home. Traveling down a country road a few weeks ago, I pulled over on the shoulder to watch and listen to a pair of sandhills do their personal interpretation of hip-hop, accompanied by hoarse squawks and macho bleats. "Duck and twist and  leap with glee,/Yeah, yeah, baby, you're the gal for me!"  was the couplet I imagined was being aimed at her from the beaky, hyperactive swain.  

In my yard, the cardinal rehearses his part for the upcoming Redman concert as he follows me around, and the soft, fluting tootle-oo of bluebirds sweetens the chore of burying compost. And as the snow recedes, the grass and perennials underneath are revealed to be an audacious, almost audible green. Green! Be still, my heart! Did you think you'd never see it again, O ye of little faith? 

"Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby," wrote Nebraska prairie author, Willa Cather, in My Antonia.  Ain't it the truth?