The US Army Corps of Engineers have closed the sluice gates, and now the dam is beginning to fill up again. I will miss seeing the skeletons of old Howard as I walk over the bridge, but I am hopeful for spring.

We are a week past the vernal equinox, but spring really does not begin until the dam starts to fill. Yes, the Red-winged Blackbirds have been here for two weeks, and the American Robins have been sprinting across yards since February, yet it was not truly spring. When the Bald Eagle spills over its ancient banks and spreads into what was once the brickyards and farmlands, I know spring has arrived.

I am at odds with my other feelings on the turning of the seasons. Summer begins with fireflies dancing at dusk. Fall sweeps through with the calls of migrating wild geese. Winter arrives with gusting winds to carry away the last of the leaves. Spring begins with a human activity, timed to the early rains.

All aspects of my outdoor life revolve around the lake, or lack thereof. I do not fish until the water reaches the Boat Club Dock. I will hunt fossils at Christmas when the exposed lake bed is frozen. I arrange my hikes and walks around what birds are close to shore, and swim when the water is right. For me, the rising levels of the water mark the start of the year.

I must admit- what I love most about the park, the lake, is a source of hate for others. The completion of the dam and filling of its basin is a cause for generational loathing of government overreach here, even when the work is warranted. Without the dam, billions of dollars of damage and human displacement would have happened, and continue to happen, along the lower reaches of the Bald Eagle.

As I look up valley from the causeway bridge, I see what could have been my inheritance; farmland from ancestors whose deeds would have passed from my great-grandfather, to pappy, to dad, to me. I see the remains of the road and railway, the routes the milkman drove and kids bicycled. Too, I see the fish hides and cormorant poles and trash, signs of recent life.

This spot on the bridge is important to me. From it, I once threw a necklace gifted to me by a boyfriend into the lake. The jewelry instead landed on a passing boater, having slid under the bridge before I could stop myself. The boater slowed, looked up, and commented “Jeez, this looks cheap. He must have really sucked!” before dropping it in the water. (Reader, the boater was, in fact, right!)

Another time, I leaned on the bridge as I watched an Osprey in my binoculars, full of wonder as it dived into the water in search of fish. Or even when I have dashed out on a freezing day to sight Tundra Swans stopping to refresh themselves on their migration north. Deep in my diary are countless stories of college days fishing and having park rangers stop and give me hell for screwing around when I should have been in class.

Deep down inside, I feel that without the dam, I never would have been born. The dam would have never been built if the river hadn’t meandered down this valley, which in turn wouldn’t have happened if the glaciers wouldn’t have receded and allowed the earth to rebound, changing the direction of the Susquehanna and, in turn, creating the Bald Eagle… one long unbroken chain of cause and effect.

Too, cause and effect control the seasons; Earth’s axial tilt and position relative to the sun (cause) creates the conditions required for the seasons (effect). The increasing rains from the seasonal shifts in weather patterns (cause) require the Engineers to draw down the water levels of the lake (effect). They close the gates when barely anything remains (cause) allowing for runoff to accumulate and start the calendar of my year (effect).

We live in a complex web of connection; one small action creates a cascade of change. The changes happening in spring mean different things for each person that experiences it… I interpret the movement of seasons differently than you do. If I were not finely attuned to the lake, I would instead associate the beginning of spring with hearing the calls of Red-winged Blackbirds like my mother, or the start of trout season, like my grandfather.

As I walk back off the bridge and return to my car, I hear the cackling of a Bald Eagle. Like me, it looks forward to the return of the lake. How else would it feed its baby, if it were not for the fish in its waters?