The old man and the boy stood on the bank of the creek. The stream, which had trickled through a snow-choked channel only a month ago, was now rushing with meltwater from far up the mountain. It was still a meager flow compared to the torrent it would become in a few more weeks, though, and the boy balanced on a boulder to thrust a stick into it. "See, Grampa?" he said. "It's halfway up the tree limb now!" The old man sat and, taking a kitchen match from the brim of his hat, re-lit his pipe. He sat on an old weather-peeled log and patted the space next to him. The boy came and sat, jabbing in the pine needles with his stick. The old man gradually raised his arm, pointing a gnarled forefinger at a rock overhang some four feet above the creek bed. "Watch and you'll likely see somethin'" he said. The boy sat staring at the rock for a while in excitement, then anxiousness, then weariness, and finally he let his body roll backwards off the log, shooting at a bluejay with his stick in the fir above him.

Suddenly, he felt the old man reach under his back and raise him back up onto the log. The old man pointed again, and this time the boy saw the otter, who poked its nose out from under the rock, sniffing, its eyes watery as if with sleep. After a momentary hesitation, it clambered part way down the bank and then slid into the creek. It disappeared in the cloudy water, but then broke surface near a small boulder, paddling in the calm backwater casually, turning to catch the sun on his belly.

The boy glanced up to see another otter and three tiny kits emerge from beneath the rock. The female nudged the infants forward until they slid floundering in the water. The male seemed to watch this exercise with some amusement, then submerged briefly, then re-emerged near the other four. The old man and the boy watched for some time until the boy made an effort to approach the kits and frightened the family back to their lair.

"Now you scared em Charlie," said the old man, and it wasn't until he saw the quizzical look on the boy's face that the old man realized he was calling the boy by another boy's name, another boy that had stood on this same spot some thirty years ago, a boy who had become this boy's father. The old man tapped out his pipe and thought of all the springs and all the litters of young otters who had made their first journey from the warm safety of the lair to this strange cold moving world. And that made him think of all the other Marches of his life, and of how that portentious month had always borne him a load of hardship and hope, of bitter endings and bright beginnings, an equal freight of life and death. He mused that this was his third spring without Maisie and that the pain of that ending, which had been as sharp as the blade of a knife, had become something he could finally begin to let go of, the pain slipping away like the rushing water before him, until the memories of her were only the warm and sweet ones that gave him comfort. He watched the boy balancing on a rock and holding the stick in the air. The separation of the boy's parents had caused his son to leave the child in the old man's care for the spring. And there was an ending and a beginning in that too. After the initial awkwardness, the boy had taken to his grampa, and had left his computer games long enough to ride in the old truck, or help carry in firewood, or walk down to the creek.
The old man rose from his seat, stretched, and put his pipe in his shirt pocket. "Come on Charlie" he said, and this time the boy only smiled, leaned the stick against a boulder and ran to catch up with the man who, as if by instinct, took the boy's hand firmly but gently in his own as he walked up the trail.