I’m not sure calendars tell the truth. February feels like the longest month. I try to reassure myself that it only has 28 days, but every so often they go and sneak an extra one in. One would think that February would fly by, what with several holidays, but by the time winter has worn us down this far we fail to appreciate a day off. I can’t even make myself chuckle at the groundhog
There’s no proof that March is the month when spring will begin to approach, in fact, past experience in this part of the world proves otherwise. Still, March just sounds more hopeful, and I’m already in countdown mode.
There are signs. The swans are back. A couple of dozen are on the creek at the home place, hunting a bit of open water. I wonder if they think they made a mistake and looked at the wrong calendar. Open water comes and goes this time of year, and I’m not sure what they do when it ices over.
My grandparents and two other neighboring families homesteaded on three sides of Swan Lake, and the generations have hung tough, so their descendants are still on the land. As a kid, I could never figure out how that lake got its name because I had only ever seen swans in pictures, although we had plenty of ducks, pelicans, and other water birds. Dad said there must have been a swan sometime, but he didn’t recall any. But about twenty years ago, a loner appeared at a water hole alongside the road that leads to Seneca. It stayed, and was soon joined by a few more. Nowadays, swans can be found on many of the lakes around the Sandhills, and last summer we had a nesting pair in our meadow.
Wildlife seems more plentiful nowadays. Used to be if someone saw a deer it was conversational fodder for a week. The coyote population is always pretty stable, but now we have the occasional mountain lion or elk, and there have even been moose sightings, although those were likely just passing through. About a dozen years ago, I took a back road home from Cheyenne and spotted a black bear just across the line in Nebraska. One of our friends tells of a fox that lives on the east edge of Alliance. It was rare to see a bald eagle or even a golden until the last twenty years or so. One of those may have caused the demise of our pet kitten this week. Actually, they have been so prevalent that I’m amazed we keep any cats around at all.
Change is the only constant in life. While the winged creatures and four-leggeds increase, we have a scarcity of two-leggeds as our rural areas become more rural. I miss my old neighbors who have died or moved away, and the kitten that sat on my lap every evening, but I’m happy for swans that bring hope of springtime.