Longer Days

Ralph Bartholdt/Skookum

The road bumps up an incline like a roller coaster with the chains underneath clinking and rattling on a rail.
Passengers are jostled, the driver of the car or pickup considers suspension and what this road might jar loose, or fracture.
The vehicle moves through low light under canopies of yellow pine, past glades snow smattered with deer raising their heads and skewing their ears as they eat greening shoots.
Mud makes a rubbing sound in the disc brakes, cakes in the fenders and speckles the paint.
Drivers and passengers shield their eyes now to the sun, its last sharp rays, setting over a lake - what else but one of North Idaho's many lakes - and then the car stops.
Sunset time from up here is electra.
Winter is almost gone and the days are getting longer. We know this instinctively. That is how we made it to March. For this is the best month.

Here's how it works:

http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/coeur-d-alene-idaho.html

Hold on! Another North Idaho spring is rattling the bush.

-Ralph Bartholdt