The Rare Bird of Jasper County

   It’s exactly one month until the Vernal Equinox, that time of year when the southern hemisphere makes the turn towards autumn and the northern hemisphere begins to awake to another spring. It’s no coincidence that my adaptable Irish ancestors co-opted St Patrick and celebrate his festival within days of the old pagan solar event.

  

  This year, daylight savings resumes the weekend prior.  Long twilight evenings, we have missed you so.  I am always ready for winter to be done.  In the Midwest the leave taking can resemble a long tortured goodbye. A bright warmish spell gives in to snow flurries, or ice storms well into March. But there eventually comes a day when the light changes, and a southern wind brings a hint of spring. That hint comes with an earthy smell and the honkings of geese as they fly over on their way north. Road kill abounds as unfortunate possum and raccoons litter the pavement, having crossed the road at inopportune times, seeking to supplement their bare pantries after a long cold winter. These are the first signs of spring. The crocus, early tulips, and turkey vultures come a few weeks later.

  But right now we are at the end. The end of winter that hasn’t quite exhausted its repertoire.  I drive north three times a week through rolling brown farm land. The acres stretch out for miles, dotted by windmills, a barn or house here and there. Horses, cattle and the occasional llama stand with their backsides to the wind, their winter coats puffed out, wet, dirty, patiently waiting for spring.

   

  Puddles stand in the fields now, corn stubble poking out of the muddy water, making it hard to imagine that within six weeks huge farm machinery could be in those same fields plowing up furrows of moist dark top soil. Right now it appears that anything with any weight to it would sink in the muck, to be retrieved by the archaeologists of a future century.

   Snow clings to the base of telephone poles, retreating into the shadows where the weak, late winter sun can’t penetrate.  It’s stubborn, not wanting to yield to the trumpet vines and morning glory that will engulf the poles in a few months.

  

  I turn off the two-lane and take the interstate ramp north towards Chicago. I’m bound to a small town two counties away. The land flattens out as I drive closer to the Great Lake. The wind picks up and still has a bite, even this late in the winter, blasting across the prairies, direct from the Rockies. My car bumps along, as the gusts hit.

  

  The interstate runs from Mobile, Alabama to the Region as Hoosiers call it. The area just south of Chicago, where the flat, nasal, slightly southern twang of the rest of the state gives way to the dese, dose, and longer, harder consonants of the lakeshore. The interstate pulses like an artery linking the important city centers of the heart of the country, Mobile, Birmingham, Atlanta, Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis, and Chicago.

  

  But I’m not going that far north. Far north enough that I’m into the Lake effect snow belt, but still among small towns, and rural Indiana. I am employed by my bank to offer mortgage services to the branches to the north of my home. I do a fair amount of driving these days, but I don’t mind. NPR reaches all the branches I visit, so I’m getting more aware if not smarter about what is going on in the rest of the world. (If it’s any consolation, I’ve learned the Brits are just as crazy as we are lately.) 

   

  No one ever grew up wanting to be a mortgage loan originator. The job is something you fall into, rather than aspire to, but in all its complexity, people still need money to purchase homes and I work for a bank, which is where you get money-so, I have a steady client base.

  

  This is a gray time of year. Nothing is attractive, not the farmsteads, the small towns, or the countryside. I dodge potholes as I enter the small town where my appointment is. Everything looks dirty, bits of trash dot the streets which is the condition of most of the communities here at this time of year. The small private college that’s been here for years closed down a couple years ago. Financially strapped, or financially mismanaged, or a combination of both. Driving by is sad. I know people who went there and loved it.

  

  In that frame of mind I enter the town square and began looking for a parking place – then I saw it  -- the bird.  The rare bird of Jasper County in full plumage.  I stopped in the gas station across the road so I could gawk. It is beautiful, colorful, and whispers sweet promises of spring.