Spring in the Mountains

Reader Contribution by Bruce Mcelmurray
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I’m not sure what this topic has to do with homesteading but it does have to do with our life in the mountains and the first day of spring. We don’t need a calendar or meteorologist to tell us when spring starts at our location. We have our own indicators that are also very accurate. We have a little thing-a-ma-bob that we bought at a craft fair many years ago that does a remarkable job of predicting spring time. It is a small cut glass triangle soldered together with a prism hanging in the middle. It accurately tells us exactly when spring arrives each year. Even though we still have two feet of snow on the ground outside the little prism doesn’t lie about the beginning of spring regardless of the snow.

We purchased this cut glass do-hickey probably 25+ years ago at one of the premium craft fairs in Tallahassee, Florida. We have always enjoyed craft fairs because of the hand made and unique items that are available. I believe it was at that particular fair that we also purchased four rum balls from two nice ladies from Georgia who were selling them for .50 cents each. They were the best rum balls I have ever tasted and they sold out quickly as others found them tasty as well. After walking around looking at the various items and munching our rum balls we noticed we were getting a little buzz from the rum balls. Neither of us are drinkers so we noticed the potency of those rum balls quickly. Did I mention how craft fairs have unique and different items for sale?

We came to a booth where the vendor had made several cut and beveled glass items with prisms hanging inside. We purchased one and have displayed it or hung it in a window ever since. Therefore when we moved here 18 years ago the triangular window in our living room seemed to be the perfect place to locate the cut glass trinket. We noticed one year that on the first day of spring it commenced to emit rainbows. As the seasons went by we found that our house was perfectly situated so that on the first day of spring each year rainbows would suddenly be all over the ceiling. It clearly has something to do with the precise positioning of our house and the rotation of the earth but we have watched for several years now and on the first day of spring the rainbows magically appear.

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