Something says stand and wait, look out and over; and when I do life stirs, assembles, and flies. The yellow marsh grasses sway beyond me. Ice shines white in the drainage ditches. A flicker, sun loaded, flies over to the far side. Tall dry reeds rattle together. In silence, a female purple finch lands on a tree facing the wind, its breast shining in the light. I hear the dry “tik” of a myrtle warbler. Then a chickadee swings and loops out of a wind-washed pitch pine above me. Through the thickets of alder, shad, blueberry, and sumac on the surrounding banks, I become aware of a sweet spring voice, then of small singings here and there, and when I follow them up I realize they come from the shrubs themselves. Twigs rustle and touch. Gray branches out of frozen ground sing in contact. Even the marsh reeds make occasional sharp, squeaking twangs. There is no melody among the birds. A robin, although it is as red as it will ever be in spring, and fatter, with feathers puffed out on the cold, flies to an alder bush, where a few dried berries are still hanging, to perch without a sound. The music is there, though it may become louder and richer in a later context. Musical capacity is not confined to a few animals, or to spring and summer. Cold air and frost rehearse with plants as well, under the changing sun. The song of light is played in many ways. _The Sea in the Ground_ It is on just such a day, when hope, interest, renewal seem to be afforded, though held in check, that I find other local residents--other people, other customs--that are not only in readiness, but blooming with color as though it were summertime. The temperature is barely at the freezing point. The air is bright and clear, and the top of the ground is played over by sunny warmth. In flowing fields that skirt the oaks, the reindeer moss, with many branches, perhaps suggestive of antlers (though it gets its name because it provides food for reindeer and musk oxen in the frozen tundras of the Arctic), is gray like dawn dew, or an almost luminous gray-green. Light nests of snow with sparkling hexagonal flakes rest between its curly fronds. The reindeer moss is one of the lichens. A lichen, each separate plant, multitudes of which compose the visible growth, is a composite of a fungus and an alga, seen only through a microscope. The alga contains the coloring matter, or chlorophyll, and can therefore carry out the process of photosynthesis, manufacturing food with water and sunlight. The fungus, which has no such ability, wraps its threads around the alga, protects it from the sun, and stores the moisture for their partnership; and, if they are of the rock-growing variety, anchors them both securely.