The day is filled with a heart full of nostalgia's and a soulful of warm memories.
Only in this Appalachian Mountain Country World can we experience our roots that cling to the Earth as if our very existence depended upon it.
We feel our inner depths, our outer joys and our in between sweet essences.
The sheer contrast of
evergreen against blue, depressions of snow-white against leaf-brown and the sun-filled
cloud-wisped day brush stroke our mind with an impressionistic painting equaled only by
the creator of this majestic scene.
Silent stirrings of wildlife are seen in snow prints of turkey, deer, raccoon and field mice. Wing beats of the red-tailed hawk are heard far above the treetops upon which they perch and search for food. A ruffed grouse flushes out of a thicket by our intrusion into its world and we become captured by its unique natural beauty.
Mountain County hills and valleys hibernate under the cold, clear, bluebird sky of late February simmering uneasily at the brink of Spring.
This Winter has been that kind, that way, from its beginning. Cold temperatures were slow in coming and only sporadic and brief when they did come. There were spells in between when it seemed like late Autumn or early Spring.
January's melt time came and went without notice as Winter's hibernation seemed all to short and shallow. Mother Nature continues to whisper hints of Spring with gentle rains, azure skies, light snows and warm temperatures.
The flow of the seasons is as different and varied as the flow of the streams into rivers on their way to the sea.
Copyright © 1988-2000 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published February 22, 1989 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.