Day and night and night and day, things are stirring in the Smallwood woods and the Mongaup Valley now. For a week or two already, their dizzying canticle resounds around the forest floor in the late afternoon and deep night: tiny invisible spring peepers, chanting.

Smallwood’s very own ‘civic’ deer parade across our roads and properties in shaggy groups of eight or eighteen with their usual mix of shy curiosity and non-chalance; some of the mature specimens sport swayback bellies full of fawn.

Then there are the invisible nocturnal beasts knocking the heads off our garbage pails and bird feeders: hungry bear. The robin redbreasts are back; the gonking geese are back; the waddling woodchucks are back. It would all be so beautiful if only the forests would turn green. Meantime: mud, more mud, and the irrepressible activities of our region’s other forest inhabitants: human beings.

Joan McDonald, Co-Chair for Membership of The Club at Smallwood, came in to Sticky Fingers the other day to purchase her lunch and some ice cream. Joan informed about The Club’s plans for the coming season. The Club, which opened in 1954 and sits adjacent to “Friends Bar & Grill,” currently operates on an all-volunteer basis from about July 4th through Labor Day.

Its schedule for the season is gloriously packed with events for young and old, with multiple activities per day keeping members busy. Choose if you can from swimming, painting classes, water aerobics, book club, wellness discussion groups, historical and horticultural lectures, bocce and pickle and hand ball, basketball, volleyball, and pingpong. Then there’s the smorgasbord of three catered dinners and dances and card playing and live music and the art show.

The Club will open daily from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM (Fridays: 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM). Pride and joy and most important asset of The Club has to be its fabulous sparkling 70’ long heated swimming pool, where friendships can form under a shady canopy while picnic baskets are unpacked. – If you’d like to join, membership is $350 per adult (children under 21 are free).

For more information about “The Best Kept Secret in Sullivan County,” take a look at www.theclubatsmallwood.com, or give Joan McDonald a call at (917) 620-8561.

Over at the Smallwood Civic Association (SWCA), other buds of human activity are also popping. Despite the bitter winter and recent heavy rains, work has recommenced at the Boat Launch on Lakeshore Drive. A SWCA community litter pluck up and a beach clean-up will be held on April 23rd starting at 11:00 am. Please meet at the beach and bring a rake, work gloves and suitable shoes.

Another cleanup is planned for the Association’s lovely Lodge on May 1st at 11:00 AM. Organizers request you bring along a rake and work gloves.

The recently- and dazzingly - refurbished Tennis and Pickleball courts to the side of the Lodge will open for play on May 1st. And finally, a SmART fundraiser has begun: buy a “NO to BESIDE” sign to show your support; signs can be purchased on the SmART website at SmARTBethel.org.