Yes, spring is here. Little cricket bugs are chirping and so are the birds. The heat is wandering about in lazy circles like a great golden tabby already. Winds have become fickle; lying low one moment, scattering leaves with a wicked humor the next. All about the hills fat heads of wheat nod, sweet and bitter, next to wild chicory and seeded grass heads ready to burst free. The canvas of the sky is deepening into a layered blue that warns cloud gazers that the heady spell of spring comes with a price tag, because nothing is free. And the fanged wind of cold, barren days is already clawing its way back north. The land feels the warming and the people who know the land felt it too. Already the air is filling and deepening into a rich, earthy smell of damp soil and new life. Some nights are dry and star dappled, others wet and stormy. The other night I walked down into the center of our field, the cropped grass brittle and soft, and I lay down on my back and stared at the eternal sky. I lay there and breathed in the sweat and bitter wheat and let myself float in the feeling of eternal oblivion that hits me at this time of year when the world is bright and dark with an exotic strangeness and an even stranger familiarity.