March roared into our mountain world like one wild, super mean, hungry lion this year. She pounced upon us with a viciousness that, in my humble opinion, was hardly called for. The first two weeks of March were bitterly cold. In some ways, much more painful than the long cold spell that we survived in January. The last two weeks were wet and windy and mean, even if they were not as cold. Years ago, I read a description of March that has stayed with me across the long years: “ March is an old witch with big silver eyes and frozen rain in her wild hair.” And so she is. And March 2019, was no exception here in the old, coal mining country.
Mostly the mountains and ridges here in our country carried the fading gray of winter through March. There were occasional skiffs of snow that brightened the hills, if only for a day or two, but the hills pretty much stayed that winter gray that we all know so well. During the last few days of the witchy month, the woods began to quicken. If you looked quick and sharp, by the last windy days, you could start to some of the earliest maples beginning to bud red, and the willows starting to turn bright yellow, and some of the greenbriars starting to show color. But, you had to look quick and sharp, the gray still overwhelms the hills and hollows where the old men dug the coal.
Then April blew into the mountains here on the last of the March witch's winds. But April is not March, and the winds blew warm and dried out the ground and picked up the last of last year's leaves and swept them across the land in whirlwinds, arabesques, and comically, wild dances. Still not springtime, but there seems to be laughter and smiles in the April air. Like the life rising in the trees around us, I think that Hope rises in our souls in the spring, too. We have suffered and survived the winter, bound by the cold and dark, but Life returns to the land with the sun and we come back to Life as well.
Life returns to our mountain world with the rising of April. It is subtle at first – a few trees begin to bud; red, yellow, and white buds begin to color the gray woods. The first spring flowers begin to show, the daffodils, the forsythia, and the tulips. Suddenly, the lawns and fields are full of robins, hunting flocking, mating, nesting. The silent air of winter is gone, replaced with the chirping and tweeting and singing of flocks and flocks of birds that are back for the summer. If you sleep with your bedroom windows open, the odds are that you have been awakened once or twice already by the pre-dawn symphony. That is one of the few things that I don't mind interrupting my morning sleep. There is pure harmony and joy in the bird's pre-dawn singing.
How can we speak of the capriciousness of April without commenting on the oft poetically referred to “April showers”? Although March, in almost any place that I have lived, tends to be wet, somehow we have come to relate rain “showers” with April. I was thinking about “April Showers” as I spent the day driving through torrential rainstorms and near hurricane force winds yesterday. There was nothing nurturing, nor loving, nor whimsical about yesterday's April shower. It was nasty, cold and brutal. Yesterday's April rain was as miserable as anything January can dish out. Even with that wintry rain, the trees pushed leaves out all day, giving a much different look to the woods by evening. But, then I remembered the shower last week that left that marvelous smell of warm, summer thundershowers; the smell of warm, wet asphalt, spring soil, and the sweet, sweet smell of growing things. April is capricious, wild, and wildly unpredictable.
If March is an old witch with big silver eyes and frozen rain in her wild hair, then April is a giggly, teenaged girl, who can't decide on what she wants to wear to the party. She has windblown blonde hair and wears flowers in her hair. Her peaches and cream complexion belie her flashing wild eyes. She takes us from the last gasps of winter, through a wild ride of changing weather, while Life, and warm weather, return to the hills and hollows, the mountains and valleys of the old, coal mining country. April is a wild ride with a giddy woman-child whose mercurial whimsy keeps us guessing as the sun climbs higher into the sky over the abandoned tunnels and lonely, empty strip jobs.
Those empty strip jobs rare their hunched backs into the vast dome of the sky over our mountains. Some of them just beginning to grow the wild grasses, some of them covered with rich, carpets of grass that have developed over the long, sweep of years. On some of the old domes, the brush has begun encroaching on the grasslands as the inevitable, endless, perfect cycle of reforestation works its way through time. Some of the older stip jobs are forested now, that many years have swept through this land where the old men dug the coal.
And true to keeping with her wild-child, capricious, giddy adolescent persona, April delivered a marvelously beautiful spring day today. The morning sun lifted above the eastern hills, riding up in the clear and glorious sky. A few puffy white clouds rode the soft wind and the air was as clear as crystal. All across the neighborhood, the rhythmic hum of lawn mowers drowned out the flocks of birds, if only for a while. The afternoon smelled of newly mown grass. Not a person in the world could have ordered a more perfect day!
Darkness covers our mountain world again, tonight, as April wanders inexorably toward May. The air is soft and warm, with just a bit of chill in it – perfect for the last few days of April. March is a witch kitty everyplace where I have ever lived, and April drives you crazy 'cause it's not quite springtime. This land where the old men dug the coal is no different. Hold on to Hope, summer is just over the horizon.
