The search for shadows and the earliest signs of the awakening
“Whet up yer knife and whistle up yer dogs, Whet up yer knife and whistle up yer dogs, “We’re goin’ to the woods to catch groundhogs.
Oh, ground-hog!”
For many wonderful years, a large group of old friends would gather together on a typically cold night in early February to celebrate a native rodent endowed with allegedly remarkable and, we’ve been told, unerring predictive powers. There’d be great food, wonderful companionship that could banish anything the “bleak midwinter” could dish out, and, of course, lots of singing in honor of Marmota monax. “You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Groundhog” rang through the night for Elvis fans, and a trio of ambitious and occasionally in-tune singers led the choir through an adaptation of “Punxsutawney Dreamin’,” the signature of the Mamas and the Papas rewritten for Punxsutawney Phil, the star of the February 2nd Groundhog Day show in Pennsylvania.
But before we rolled out the venerable hand-cranked ice cream maker to craft the treat everyone had come for— the stronger folks among us provided the muscle, the kids performed the all-important job of “butt-sitting” to keep the machine on the floor— we had to run through at least a dozen stanzas of the “Groundhog Song,” a traditional Appalachian folk tune. This paean to hunting and eating these rodents has been around forever, with a 1928 78 RPM recording by Jack Reedy and His Walker Mountain String Band among the earliest, according to an authoritative compendium of research called the Traditional Tune Archive. The song no doubt had much earlier roots, and has since been recorded by everyone from Pete Seeger and Doc Watson to the Everly Brothers. Alas, the tape was not rolling when the Naturalist pulled out his banjo and stumbled through the song, so any record of our so-called singing exists only in memory. It will have to do because, for a variety of reasons that include participants no longer being able to drive at night, finger a stringed instrument (damned arthritis), remember words or sing in tune (that never stopped anyone), or, sadly, attend in the flesh, the gettogether no longer happens. The geezers have had to cede the down-home event to the next generations, but, so far, they haven’t taken up the songbook, the banjo, and the ice-cream maker. (Or maybe they just haven’t invited us.)
Punxsutawney Phil, however, remains true to tradition, and even if our band of celebrants won’t be lifting our voices in tribute, the Pennsylvania groundhog will certainly be present at Gobbler’s Knob as it gets light on the morning of February’s second day to whisper his fateful weather prediction— in groundhog-ese, of course—into the ears of his top-hatted handlers, who will then translate Phil’s forecast to the cheers or groans of the multitudes in attendance.
So it has been since 1886, when Clymer Freas, the city editor of the Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper, made note of the behavior of a local groundhog around the time of Candlemas Day, a Christian celebration that takes place 40 days after Christmas, which puts the holiday on February 2nd . Of particular interest was whether the critter would see his shadow or not, and according to an ancient tradition brought over from Europe by Pennsylvania Dutch, actually German, immigrants, how the animal would then respond to the sighting was key to how the winter would proceed.
In Europe, all eyes would have been on the badger, but Pennsylvania was badgerless, so the settlers had to go with something that appeared similar, the woodchuck.
Wann der Dachs sei Schadde seht im Lichtmess Marye, dann geht er widder in’s Loch un beleibt noch sechs Woche drin. Wann Lichtmess Marye awwer drieb is, dann bleibt der dachs haus un’s watt noch enanner Friehyaahr, wrote folklorist Thomas R. Brendle in his Collection of Pennsylvania German Folklore, Volume 1 (1995). For those of you who don’t speak that Mother Tongue, here’s the translation: “When the groundhog sees his shadow on the morning of Mary Candlemas, he will again go into his hole and remain there for six weeks. But if the morning of Mary Candlemas is overcast, the groundhog will remain outside and there will be another spring.”
Clymer Freas, who is generally credited with being the “father” of Groundhog Day in this country, turned this observation question into a formal town-wide celebration in 1887, and the tradition of predicting winter’s end and a renewal of spring crops has continued and continued, with numerous prognosticating pretenders to Phil’s “seer of seers” throne throughout North America.
As to their accuracy, well,
groundhog true believers may declare that their rodent is never wrong, but less partisan researchers, in an effort to assess the reliability of the predictions, have shown the augury to be about as ironclad as a coin toss. Case in point: last year, when Phil declared we were in for six more weeks of winter at a time that felt more like April than February, the Polar Vortex brought us cold so intense that by February 3rd and 4th, the Mount Washington Observatory was logging temperatures that, with wind chills, registered 108 below zero—the lowest ever recorded in North America. A few days later, however, it was downright warm and so it remained for what was essentially a winterless winter. So much for seerage. As I write this a week before Phil-and-company’s Big Day, I’m certainly not going to go out on a climatological limb and predict the shadowy future, save to say this: in the Northeast, at least, no real groundhog is going to be seeing much of anything on the 2nd, other than sweet dreams. It’s the middle of winter, halfway between the equinox and the solstice— Imbolc, in the pagan calendar—and, whether the landscape is blanketed with snow or brown with leaf litter, groundhogs are hibernating underground. They probably won’t be waking up and emerging into a grudgingly greening world for at least another month or two. This unfortunate truth puts the prognostications emanating from Punxsutawney and beyond in the same category as stolen elections, autismcausing vaccines, and other shams. At least Phil’s forecast is harmless good fun. And maybe, with climate change, groundhogs may start emerging early from winter sleep—more in tune with the pattern set by European badgers. There are definite signs of this on the ridge. The ice that gripped many a waterfall in silence has given way to noisy currents. The White-throated sparrows, which have been quiet at the feeders, have found their “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody” voices, with the drumming of various woodpeckers beating out a rhythm that just may contain the germ of a question: “Anyone interested?” Maybe not yet, but soon enough there’ll be answers in the increasing light. In the meanwhile, I’m watching the bridge railings that span a neighborhood creek for the first appearances of winter stoneflies, whose aquatic larvae are among the first insects to transition to adulthood. If the recent warmth continues, there may be early crocus shoots and Winter Aconite leaves springing from the thawing ground, and any day now, I expect to spot signs of life in a patch of Skunk Cabbage plants, whose hooded blossoms will soon turn on their furnaces and warm the frozen earth. And no matter what Phil has to say, the delicate reddish crepe-paper blossoms of the Vernal Witch Hazel plants I grow have debuted. These welcome flowers are always early, and global warming has accelerated their bloom time, which used to be around Valentine’s Day and is now often before Phil’s pronouncement. Maybe I’ll dust off the banjo and sing something in their honor. Maybe, in keeping with another treasured tradition, I’ll even make ice cream. I wonder if I can train a groundhog to butt-sit.