The forest plants seem confused. Skunk cabbage must think it is already spring. They have sent up fragile green shoots through the bog waters. The next freeze will turn them dead brown. On the trunks of rotting spruce trees, still green sorrel plants try to shake off yesterday’s snow. Only the berry plants have gotten the weather memo.

The blueberry and huckleberry plants have gone to rest for winter. They dropped their berries and leaves last fall. Here and there bright red spheres cling to the dead sprigs of the famine berry plants.  But, as their name suggests, they are suppose to make themselves available until the hardscrabble time of late winter.

Nothing on the exposed beach suggests an early spring. No green shows on the brittle beach grass or cow parsnip plants. The dull-green sea and a raft of party-color harlequin ducks riding the swells provide the only natural color. Aki, in her yellow wrap, looks as overdressed as a tuxedoed groom at a baseball game.