White wind

 It's times like this I wish I could express myself poetically.

We are in the midst of the first real warm spell of the year.  Yesterday afternoon, I raced home after work to experience the remaining hours of a dream of a day.  A stiff southwesterly breeze blew across the landscape, and the sounds of birds, for the first time in months, filled the air.  Earlier in the day, it had rained for hours, but now the sun was intermittently poking through the clumpy gray clouds.  The temperature stood at a very comfortable 66 degrees Fahrenheit.  My soul was feeling restless.

Once home, I make a quick change, then headed out across the street.  I could have gone anywhere, but the atmosphere was especially powerful in that moment, and I did want to lose a moment of it driving around in my car.  Besides, "my" prairie is always devoid of other humans.  There is an air of ancient wisdom here, in the soil, in the rocks, and in the breeze.

Just a few days ago, the prairie was burned.  Where it had been all but impenetrable laid barren black ground in waves.  The aroma of char hung heavy everywhere.  Here and there were items exposed by the flames - smooth glacial erratics, a few golf balls appearing as roasted marshmallows, and a couple of flattened aluminum cans, the old ones that were missing their pop tabs.  In time, these will be swallowed up in a sea of big bluestem.

Muskrat lodge

The crunchy ground turned squishy beneath my boots as I approached a marsh full of cattails that had their tops burned off.  Entering the marsh, I kept my eyes focused for groggy, torpid frogs.  I was surprised that the chorus frogs were not calling.  Great groups of killdeer nervously cried and fluttered about.  Flocks of Canada geese and sandhill cranes made their ways across the sky, and the red-winged blackbirds gave me the side-eye as I trudged my way close to their projected nesting sites.  Across the marsh were a group of ducks that sounded very much like wood frogs.

Northern leopard frog emerging from the cold floor of the marsh

Standing in the middle of the marsh, about shin deep in the muck, a long break in the clouds delivered warm sunlight to my face.  A gentle breeze instantaneously reminded me of a time past.  It felt incredible.  I may have stood there for ten seconds, or ten minutes.  

I'm not sure.

But it signaled the beginning of another season, as in millennia before.  Nature knew the routine.

"This restlessness has always been the foam sleeping in the waves; my heart is betrayed by silence, like a thief who lies in wait" - School of Seven Bells, "White Wind"

Sandhill cranes heading north