The cloudsheet that has covered these hills through the longest nights has been dragged off to sea by the path of the planet, uncovering the snowy woods and the buried fields to the influences of sun and birdsong.
Peace may come dropping slow, to quote Yeats the day after St. Patrick's Day, but in these mountains, spring comes rising fast.
Snow slid off the corrugated roof of the garage last week like the down comforter off the bed. The drifts reduced, and we could see where the rabbits have fed on bark and be reminded all summer just how deep it was.
The snow pack slinks off into the woods where it will lie about for another week or so. Water purls bright in the ditches. The sugar maples are tapped, and the drip of "magic water" into the keelers lifts the spirits almost as much as the liquid notes of bluebirds.
Just as the leaves fall in ordered succession each fall, so, too, do the birds return in their cycles. First we see the killdeer contour-flying over the corn stubble with so much snow still on the ground you wonder what they will eat. Then we hear red-winged blackbirds gurgleeing from the highest branches. Then the robins landing in flocks where the fields first open. Always in that order, and often in the same week.
And today the surest sign of spring of all, though perhaps not the most romantic: turkey vultures up from Virginia, wheeling on the first thermals of the season as the neighboring farmer hauls his manure spreader across the warming hillside. Ah, the homely comforts of the season.
And if there remains any doubt that the winter's stranglehold has eased, the dogs have dragged their thrift-shop afghans out of their boxes and are content to lie on their sides in the petunia beds. On the next trip to town, I'll return with onion sets in a paper sack.
So, the routines of spring play out in Upper Turkeyfoot. They are as old as agriculture. And there is a new sign of the season noticed just last year: The chrome-stacked trucks with the Texas and Oklahoma plates of the gas well drillers are running the dirt roads, preparing for profit. It is spring on the surface over Marcellus shale.
I'll keep you posted.
copyright 2010 by J. O'Brien, all rights reserved
