Saturday, March 09, 2013

It's a Good Day for It

By Keith N Fisher

People think we’ve had unusual weather this year. I listen to news casts and comments and wonder. Some people claim global warming, others claim the opposite. Still more critics point to biblical prophecy. I’ve been pleased.

It’s true, there have been weather issues in the area where I live, but it’s happened before. Floods in places where towns didn’t exist twenty years ago, are not indicators of climatic change. The floods have happened before, but nobody noticed.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m a great believer in the changes in the polar ice cap, but we’ve had a normal weather year where I live.

Outside, currently, the wind is blowing. The sun is shining, and there’s mud in the fields. In other words, It’s March.

As a child, I was taught that March was the month for flying kites. I remember days, however, when the wind blew so hard, it ripped my kites apart. Those were days when I wanted to enjoy the sun, but the wind forced me to wear my coat. It was early spring.

In those days, when I couldn’t fly a kite, I tossed a newspaper in the air and watched it play in the breeze. I lived in a place with few houses, so the paper soared for miles. Today would be a good day for it.

In my life, I’ve seen many cycles of nature. The rabbit population increases and the coyote population follows right behind. The rabbits decrease, and the coyotes die out. It’s all part of the circle of life, like in the lion king. Part of those cycles has been an increase of spiders and garden pests because of warm winters.

Our cold winter, this year, will take care of the majority of my garden slug problem. It’s been hard to deal with the extended cold periods, but I remember waiting for the school bus in sub zero weather and everyone complained. There were also periods of fog that brought excitement to our neighborhood. It was fun for a group of kids to hide in plain sight.

Learning to live with the weather was easier for us kids. Now we are older, we forget the paths we’ve been down before. We go from the box we live in, climb into another box and drive to the box where we work. We complain about road conditions and forget the romantic mystery of a fresh fallen snow.

Take time to remember. Get out of your box and enjoy the diversity. Don’t worry about the weather. Did you ever slide down a hill on your back, making tunnels in snowdrifts? Revisit the weather fun of your youth. Whatever it was, It’s a good day for it. Of course, if you spent your childhood in front of a computer, you have a whole, new, world to explore.

Good luck with your writing—see you next week.

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