Missing Indian Winter

March Lamb chased off March Lion.  This atypical weather comes on the heels of a February knockdown of Old Man Winter, which forebodes an extended summer that drains denizens, withers crops, and ebbs rivers.   The absence of capricious March’s hot and cold weather rouses consciousness of a warming globe—man made or not.

Alas, where art thou Indian Summer’s Equinox cousin, the oft-cursed Indian Winter?  Ye once roared with blustery wind that shivered our timbers and poured cold rain or dumped wet snow on farm fields and urban gardens.    The dry, parched earth longs for the erratic March Lion with its dank air, dark clouds and intemperate chill. Emerging flowers and budding trees thirst for your rain.

Farmers gaze at dry, dusty fields as they pray for a northern arctic wind collision with moisture laden clouds carried up from the Southern Gulf.   Where ye be, Indian Winter with your brooding clouds that drop copious precipitation to wash away dust and grime occasioned by lingering drought?   

Oh, for cleansing rains that swell our creeks and streams to fortify the now gaunt Missouri and Mississippi Rivers—the lifeblood of our nation—so that those behemoths flow deep and vibrant once again to carry our commerce to the sea.      

Without winter there is no spring.  An absent Indian Winter portends an elongated hot summer moving up the Seasons’ cycles, stealing Springtime from the merry, merry month of May.   The doomsayers’ predictions of disastrous climate change leave many longing for  the return of the fickle weather of March, with its sudden cold snaps, dark foreboding clouds and rainy forlorn days of which we once carped in protest. 

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.  If Indian Winter returns, we should greet him like the return of a prodigal son for we will have surely found favor with the gods once again.   Hark back, we call Indian Winter.