Spring has a variety of indicators in Vermont, and over the course of my daily 50-mile commute up the Champlain Valley, I count them up with pleasure.

Foremost among those signs is the billowing steam and smoke coming from the saphouses along my route that indicates the maple sap is running and serious boiling is in progress. All early accounts indicate that this will be a banner year for both the quantity and quality of syrup due to the presence of ideal conditions for sap flow: cool nights and warm days. Maple syrup is enjoying an ever-growing presence in the international market, so it continues to be an important part of the economy for this state.

The US Mint’s alteration of the three designs submitted for the Vermont quarter, due out in the next year, have excited no small amount of comment in the local press. It seems the design, which shows a person collecting sap from a couple of sap buckets on a maple tree, used to have a mountain in it to honor Mt Mansfield (the state’s largest), but the Mint artist decided to remove it. Many Vermonters are not happy with that federal intrusion and negotiations are underway to reassert Vermont’s wishes for how its quarter should look!

Other signs of spring include the diminishing number of prize photos from local ice fishing derbies in the community newspapers; a proliferation of “Frost Heaves Ahead” and “Bump Ahead” signs on the roads; the ferries across Lake Champlain are all operating again; and there is scarcely a skim of ice on the smaller lakes and ponds now.

One notices, on a long daily commute, a gradual decrease in the number of cars carrying skis on the ski racks, and even the early appearance of a few bicycles. Several hardy motorcyclists have gone roaring by my house already, and walkers/joggers are also ending their hibernation.

Over a dozen bald eagle sightings on the Vermont shore  of Lake Champlain have been reported in a weekly  bird column in the Rutland Herald, and just this week, I spotted an immature one in a dead tree along Route 30 in Whiting. Birdwatchers do not seem certain where the bald eagles nest (perhaps the Adirondacks) but they cause excitement during the spring migration when they show up here. This week I also introduced our department secretary to the lore of cedar waxwings as we walked between two buildings on the Medical Center Campus and observed perhaps 100 of them decimating the tiny fruit on a small tree by the sidewalk. I told her in a harsh winter that tree would have been picked clean by now, but we had a mild winter this year.

The work of pileated woodpeckers seems to be more evident each year along my drive, in both rural and urban settings. One area columnist wrote of a beech tree that finally fell over because the pileated woodpecker had excavated clear through the tree in its search for bugs and larvae! On my own property, a stately maple near the road that I had hoped would be a permanent fixture near my driveway was the object of a pileated woodpecker last fall, evidenced by the telltale shavings at the base of the tree. It carved a big cavity in what I thought was a healthy specimen, and I’ve been mourning it ever since. I’m sure the woodpecker’s activity is a sign that the tree is not as sturdy as I had hoped.

Even on my own property, I see and also create signs of a new season. Last weekend I saw a big rabbit in my small back yard; it’s the first I’ve seen on my  property in years and foretells the need for strengthening my vegetable garden fence! I also heard the whining (so it seems to me) of the phoebes last weekend as I hurried to hang out lots of laundry last Saturday. They tend to nest in inconvenient places and then repeat the monotonous “Fee-bee” whenever I go near the nest. I have urged them to use the other 14 acres of my property to no avail. My oft-repeated plea to wild creatures who want to co-habitate with me is that I want only one acre for me and they can have the other 14 acres, but they pay no attention! (That’s another story.)

What else does spring mean up here? Tag sales and plant sales, patching the potholes, kids playing outside at recess, buying fishing licenses, the ice shacks being dragged home on trailers behind the pick-up trucks, taking the lawn mower in for servicing rather than the snowmobile, and Green Up Day.

Ah, Green Up Day! One of my favorite Vermont Brag Points is 30-years-old this spring, and shows no signs of slowing down. The state highway crews clean up the sides of the state highway but on the first Saturday each May, an army of 10,000 adults and children takes to the secondary roads with green, state-issued trash bags to clean up debris – over 200 tons of it last year! I often wonder if tourists realize the extent to which state residents go to “spiff up” an already beautiful state for them to enjoy when they cross the border. And as we pick up litter, many of us wonder why anyone would throw trash out in such a heavenly place as Vermont.

Many communities plan related activities for Green Up Day, such as planting trees and or flowers, cleaning up playgrounds, and holding contests related to the trash that is picked up. An important aspect of Green Up Day isn’t even the amount of debris cleaned up; it’s establishing the precedent for young people so their attitude toward the beauty of the state will be set at an early age.

And I could not forget the explosion in our orchards of apple blossoms that will come next, especially in the Champlain Valley. The spring issue of Vermont Life magazine sports a glorious color photograph of a Vermont apple orchard in full bloom with the Bennington Battle Monument in the background, and it is spectacular. I celebrate in a small way this year by having a friend prune a big old apple tree in my yard, in the hope that I’ll get enough apples to make some applesauce and apple jelly this fall.

Vermonters know how to celebrate achievements, too, and a couple I’d like to mention for those of you who visit us in the future include the magnificent new Welcome Center in Guilford, just as you cross into Vermont on I-91 going north. Although I haven’t exactly made a study of them, I’ve been in every state but six so I’ve seen a fair number of Visitor Centers, and this one is arguably one of the very best. If you’re coming north on 91, do stop in to see it!

This month we rejoiced at the reopening of Rutland’s beautiful turn-of-the-century Paramount Theater, which had fallen into serious disrepair and required millions of dollars plus tons of donated labor to restore its original beauty. Governor Howard Dean had to admit in Opening Night ceremonies that it was even prettier than Burlington’s crown jewel, the Flynn Theater.

There is much more of course, but for many of us, daffodils, apple blossoms, maple syrup on your pancakes, songbirds, Green Up, and anticipation of Carlton “Pudge” Fisk’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer puts a special kind of joy in our hearts. Happy spring to you from the Green Mountain State!

(Check next week’s column for the answer to last week’s quotation challenge!)