A World Without Spring
 

I remember my last true spring in Madison County, with its yellow blossoms of daffodils, the pink blooms on my apricot tree, and, later that spring, the overpowering sweet smells of flowering honeysuckle and privet hedges.

After the spring of that year, there was a normal summer and a mild fall. Then, winter arrived. A bitter cold settled over the county, and refused to leave. Temperatures fell and remained below freezing day and night. That was three years ago. Now... that bleak, endless winter still holds us hostage… cold, unrelenting, and cruel.

One night, as winter first tightened its grip, all power and communication services suddenly and without warning… stopped. Radios and TVs were filled with only static, phones went silent, and the internet went dark. Knowledge about the world beyond our county line vanished. No one knows why all this was happening.

People have stopped speaking of spring and seem to accept the cold as if it has always been this way. Some in the county say the world has ended and believe we are the last ones left. Some think I’m crazy because I refuse to listen to them when they say, “It’s over, Victor… spring will never return, and you need to accept that we will all die soon.”

Under a sun that gives no warmth, the red clay is like iron beneath my boots. The creeks and rivers are frozen. The trees, devoid of any leaves, stand like brittle skeletons. Each morning, I stand in my barren garden, searching for some sign … a warming shift in the wind, the emergence of a new green shoot pushing up through the frozen soil, birds returning home. But the sky remains a cold gray, and the land is devoid of any sign of rejuvenation.

Still, I keep looking, and I hope. I tell myself that if I ever stop, that will be the moment spring truly dies. Some call me a fool. Perhaps I am, and maybe this winter will never end. But as long as I can… I will wait. Maybe all the others will surrender, but someone has to stand and resist the cold. Winter may own the land now, but it does not own the future. Because if only one of us remembers what warmth feels like, then the promise of spring’s return will never truly be gone…


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Clyde Verhine - March 2025