It must have been the backyard brook’s rattle, clear, free and pure, coupled with the brilliant car dinal’s joyous serenade from its burning-bush perch, that got my wheels a spinning. I was enjoying the cool, clear, sunlit morning with frisky Lily, joyful gait, tail wagging, prancing along the south bank’s soft, dirty ice, reduced to a chocolate sliver in most spots, but still there like a skinny shelf overlooking the water’s edge, reaching out to a few large boulders. When Lily broke through, she displayed caution and backed off. Even dogs respect spring.

As I stood there, lungs savoring the refreshing air that had coaxed neighbors out of doors over the weekend, it was as though someone gently tapped my left shoulder and turned me in the opposite direction, back to the stream, facing southwest. I looked up to the right of the barn’s peak and there it was, in the cloudless, soft blue sky: a ghost-like quarter-moon, waning and barely visible.

Being a moon creature of Cancer persuasion, the mix of running water and moon, even an old daylight moon, had unleashed something inside of me, drawn my attention, heightened my awareness to its passing cycle. It seems to happen more often as I grow older and wiser, understand. This lunar magnet will only strengthen in a couple of weeks when the new moon shows its first quarter in the midnight sky. A week later, the first full moon of spring, the Sap Moon, will illuminate the sky and stimulate growth everywhere; in man and mouse and memory, good and bad.

But even that old-ghost Monday moon got me thinking, reminiscing about springs past, pondering the one ahead. This lunar introspection swept me back to my wayward and mischievous youth, when sodden khaki turf and airborne moisture saturated my nostrils with an enchanting natural amphetamine, better than anything at Frontier Pharmacy or on the street — a wonder drug that liberates blithe spirits and can lead to trouble in controlled environments; schools, maybe even work, for instance. The sweet maple sap and mountain streams race freely, and so do the juices of adolescence and human emotion, which can, to say the least, be distracting and troublesome when boxed-in and disciplined. Alluring spring cologne seems to thin the blood and elevate the heart rate, making Library 101 quite unappealing to some school kids. Count me among them. So there I’d sit, fidgety, anxious to get to the ballpark with a bat and ball and glove, or maybe to grab a fishing rod and bait-can for a pleasant day of wild freedom, calling all the shots along a woodland stream.

Springtime bliss: difficult to contain, impossible to ignore.

Problem was that once I reached high school and teachers knew I loved baseball, they’d use it as a whuppin’ stick to reel me in, force me to comply with rules I wasn’t fond of. But compliance was never my strong suit, especially to people for whom I held little or no respect; so let’s just say that I spent a couple of springs with more time on rivers than the schoolyard diamond; not by choice, of course — well, at least, not mine. Such punishment created deep resentment and a wide void while I awaited the faster, more-competitive summer game, one that had no strings attached to book-and-blackboard drudgery, or droning lectures from uninspired instructors working for a paycheck, a pension and little else. I guess they weren’t all bad. No. Some were OK. But there were enough rigid, boring drones to make the whole experience unpleasant, especially once spring arrived with its fresh air and intoxicating fragrance that infiltrated the classroom like a seductive whisper through a bedroom window, beckoning like that faded daylight moon, the friendly ghost calling from the pale blue sky like a boyhood pal home for a three-day weekend.

It’s so enrapturing, yet foreboding, this thing called spring; a magical season when nests are built, eggs are hatched and fawns born. Boys beware. Girls, too. Our sap miraculously flows upstream from our roots, feeding buds, then leaves after a cold, stark, barren winter. Gray skeletons overnight turn to rich green spheres, full of life and vigor. How could it not be difficult to rein in these sweet lilac joys brought by our most beguiling season? A kid no longer, it still inspires me, tickles my fancy, rouses a primal physiological freshet unlike any other.

I do hope spring fever never fades in me. I’d rather be dead. A playful attic spirit pulling mischievous springtime pranks.