Human beings are faced with big questions. What’s the meaning of life? How to define truth? Where do we find value? But as February fades into March, the first question folks ask each other is the status of spring: is it just around the corner? Is it here? When, o when will this winter end?
Flocks of robins, the changing calls of cardinals and chickadees, the creeping times of sunrise and sunset all subtly light in our souls a quiet, wild hope of spring – and for me, the soundtrack of that wild hope is the faint honking of snow geese as they find their way back north. For a few days now the Iowa skies have been alive with the geese, far up, so far that their disorganized V’s look like faint, jagged pencil tracings on the clean blue and white dome of late winter (maybe early spring?) sky. But it seems like no matter how high they fly, a winter-weary observer on the brown landscape below can hear their distant honks drift down, and dream about the change of seasons.
Yesterday afternoon, an enormous flock of unruly snow geese settled down for the night in the stubble of a cornfield nearby. We got up early this morning to see the flock depart and enjoyed watching line after line of them cross the rosy sky, heading toward their northern homes. For them, spring has already started. For us, at least the dreaming of spring has begun.
