The pond trail at Charlestown has patches of snow marked with webbed feet, patches of chickweed resolutely green -- and lots of puddles. This March afternoon tells a familiar tale of spring's bumpy transitions: a long moment of blue warmth followed by a gust of frigid wind. It's as if the weather is determined to stir up memories of other Marches, other thoughts streaked with the ironies of spring.

Walking, you hear Carolina wrens and mourning doves, but also the wind chimes of those who live in the apartments on the ridge above the pond. The season is calling to those who have settled at this place in Catonsville, the largest retirement community in Maryland.

Charlestown is a visionary colony for the first generation of humans to outlive the world's expectations. Some 2,500 elderly residents now use the inter-building skywalks, restaurants, aquatic centers, classrooms and closed-circuit television system. Only 16 years old, the community has the excitement of new plans for the weekend. Part neighborhood, part resort, part college campus, it's a gathering of peers exploring their new life spans.

The pond here at Charlestown is something of an experiment, too. Nine years ago it was dug and stocked, like Noah's Ark, with representatives from all levels of the food chain. And like the community it serves, it has received everything it needs to encourage and sustain life.

The pond's curving quarter-mile expanse, bordered by cattails and other vegetation, has become a favorite excursion for residents. It's a place to take guests and grandchildren, to exercise, to walk dogs. There is a small island, a fountain and a pier, where residents fish for carp and bass.

It is a place where benches acquire memorial plaques.

Over the years, this corner of Charlestown has become a sanctuary, a touchstone with the past both for the residents who are surfing the 'Net into the 21st century -- and for those who would rather not.

Everyone already knows what a pond has to offer. They remember when spring peepers, not weather forecasters, announced the arrival of the season with their high pitches and trills. They hope spring plays the old songs again.

So far, signs of new life at the pond are encouraging: Already the air is lively with the conversations of ducks and geese building nests. Elsewhere, especially on rainy nights, male frogs have begun calling females to join them in the water. But not here, not yet.

Meanwhile, the people of Charlestown have begun slipping into their own seasonal dreams. Often spring arrives first in a shower of memories: The distant taste of freshly picked watercress, the gaze of a lover, the coolness of a mother's hands can seem more vivid than details of spring 1999.

Only after that does the heart open to what is unfolding at this time and this place. Only then does it recognize that today's breeze, blowing up its concert of chimes, can also carry renewal.

Those who stroll along the nature trail or the pond find that the season is varied and sumptuous. But for others who can no longer manage the walk, the search for spring has become the act of listening for it.

A hum is emanating from the woods at Charlestown, the hum of creation. You can also hear it inside the buildings, in the rustling murmur of the origami club, where residents are composing their spring exhibition. Folding and pressing pieces of paper, turning and refolding them, the artists' bodies crease with concentration. Butterflies and cranes fly out of homely pleats. Lilies and tulips blossom from simple squares.

The process of origami is always mysterious, these artists insist. You never get over the thrill of transformation, the surprise of making something beautiful appear from something that looks like nothing.

Outside, March is folding and unfolding, modifying and refining. The days are longer, the nights, less chilled. Down at the pond, the stage is set and the mood is right for the old songs, for the high pitches and trills of spring.

It is time to listen: to open the windows, especially on nights that are rainy, on those warm wet nights that stretch back to all the others.

Pub Date: 3/25/99