The Returnng of the Swans---Spring

It was but a fortnight ago when the lot of us were struggling with our miserable lives trying to hold off the penetrating cold, the polar vortex, dumped on us by our own behavior of idiotic consumption. We did not cry out loud but grumbled and growled about the holdings, wishing spring would show her face.

Last night, or was it early morning, in the distance we cold hear what sounded like a band of angry Southern Cheyenne moving in our direction. It was almost possible to imagine ourselves sleeping out on the Republican River snug in our tepee back in '75. It was a place we camped on Lake Bonny, a place where only 100 years earlier the Kiowa and Cheyenne ran wild chasing buffalo, and rummaging the river bottoms for wood and food. It was also not far from Julesburg, a town on the frontier they burned down three times and ran off the weary travelers who were trying to fleece them of their land. People died out there, many people. It was part of that history.

Laying in a soft bed yesterday morning, we heard the sound, the yelping to the south. I still remember the smell of the cottonwood fires in the old shelter and the kids screaming about all covered with the days food and the evenings sooty fires. 40 years ago on the Republican River not far from the mighty Platte, not far from what is now Kansas.

But this yelping was actually the returning Swans moving northward, not the Native Americans of my slumber induced-dreams. There were thousands of them today they said, some we saw flying a half mile high driving into the wind. It is a sound we knew form the west but out there it was more commonly the, snow geese, the honkers. Yesterday, they were night flying as if they were behind schedule, which is not hard to imagine. Today, the word was out they were moving through and were flooding onto fields to refuel and dropping into lakes to rest. It is a long flight to the north. What grace and beauty in there flight.

For us, they brought spring, and the memories as we laid half asleep. I'm ready, and today felt better. The yard looked like spring, the snow just in piled lumps. More swans came over so high the telephoto lens could barley reach out to the formations. A few Snow geese joined in as the weather warmed. I am not sad--but the winter, in all its splendor, is quickly gone, one more gone.