[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 22, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: March 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
PERSEPHONE RETURNS TO THE ALLEGHENIES
Mr. BYRD. Madam President, ``Winter tames man, woman, and beast,''
but Robert Browning has announced the good news:
The year's at the spring.
And the day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world.
Even as I stand here on the floor of the U.S. Senate, an
imperceptible miracle is taking place all around us--on the Capitol
Grounds, around the U.S. Capitol Building, on The Mall, along the banks
of the Potomac, in the parks--and in the adjacent countryside.
Without our feeling it, and with few people taking notice of it, the
axis on which planet Earth spins is changing its angle.
That change of angles has been going on annually without interruption
apparently for billions of years.
Off the coast of southern California, the change in the angle of the
Earth's axis will bring the swallows back to Capistrano.
Off the coast of the Carolinas, the change in the angle of the
Earth's axis will bring sunbathers back to the beaches on the Outer
Banks and vacationers to the Grand Strand along Myrtle Beach.
And as that angle shifts, drastic changes will occur, and suddenly,
the cherry blossoms will pop open and within a few days be gone.
With little advance notice, temperatures here will shoot up into the
eighties--one day 65 degrees, the next day 85 degrees. Not many more
weeks will slip by until, with little advance notice, air-conditioning
here will have to be turned on again in Government buildings, stores,
and schools. Overcoats, scarfs, and gloves will have to be stored away
until next November. And with little advance notice, overheating
taxicabs will appear along steaming streets through which perspiring
throngs of men and women scurry to escape the increasing burn of an
intemperately hot Washington spring--a spring that will all too
prematurely literally and figuratively melt into another scorching
Washington summer.
However, only a few score miles west of here lies West Virginia,
where the resplendent forms of Nature's glorious rebirth are everywhere
to be seen:
* * * The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun,
And with him rises weeping. * * * daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength * * *
Even as I speak here today, spring is making its approach to the
hills and highlands of West Virginia.
But in the Alleghenies, across which West Virginia is draped like a
cloak, and along the Blue Ridge across which West Virginia's Eastern
Panhandle is gently stretched, and down deep valleys and stream gorges
reaching toward the mighty Ohio River in numbers too generous to count,
spring returns more subtlely, more gently, and more politely than it
does here in these Potomac bottomlands.
Even as I speak, in the high reaches of Pocahontas and Randolph
Counties, WV, to the extended joy of skiers, high-banked snow still
rests heavily on the peaks and slopes of mountains so old that their
rock strata yet carry the fossil remains of lumbering dinosaurs and
long-extinct sea creatures whose descendants we can today collect along
the shore's edge at Ocean City or Rehoboth.
But with each passing day, the snow banks of the Alleghenies will
melt, adding a pristine flow to the mother tributaries that feed into
the New River and the Potomac, the Monongahela, the Kanawha, the Big
Sandy, and the Gauley rivers.
The temperatures in the Alleghenies will moderate slightly, calling
tomorrow for gloves to be put away, but postponing until next week or
the week after, tucking the scarf into a dresser drawer, and requiring
yet a few more weeks until wool can be exchanged for cotton, and the
cottons then again for sheerer and lighter garments.
Across the mountains to the west, temperatures in the 80's will not
arrive until mid- or late May in most climes, and even then, cool
breezes will wisp out of the lush forests and green hills at night to
replace the mild heat of the day with refreshment and relief.
But before that natural air-conditioning begins, West Virginia will
offer up to the sensitive and appreciative observer some of the
choicest experiences that spring offers anywhere in the world.
Senators, have you ever come out of your house on a cool spring
morning to be greeted by an assembly of blossoming crocuses that were
not there when you looked yesterday, but today foretell the wonders of
the season ahead? I have--in West Virginia.
Have you ever followed a path down a hillside just as the ``rosy
fingers of dawn'' are emerging across a cloudless, early-spring
morning, to witness at your feet and overlaying a broad mountain valley
below, the stray vapors of a morning fog lifting skyward on gentle
drafts? I have--in West Virginia.
Have you ever marveled at the lingering dew on early-spring
spiderwebs stretched about new-spring blades of grass--cobwebs whose
patterns and ornamentation suggest diamond necklaces that might render
a Russian tsarina jealous? I have--in West Virginia.
Have you ever surveyed day by day the emerging tender leaves on a
variety of hardwood tress--maples, oaks, hickory--or the first spring
buds on a dogwood? I have--in West Virginia.
I have studied across rugged crags and plunging knolls--some so
remote and so wild that never in the history of mankind on Earth has a
human foot been set there--I have watched there the week-to-week
progress of Nature's mantle of leaves and blossoms that cover winter's
drabness, and double as shelter and sustenance for returning flocks of
birds and for awakening deer and other native fauna.
Little happens quickly in West Virginia's salubrious spring. Over and
over, one can calculate and watch the daily changes in the world
about--the gradually warming sun, the gradually greening fields, the
gradually thickening leaves, the gradually flowering rhododendron and
mountain laurel, the gradually climbing and sweet-smelling honeysuckle
vines, the gradually more varied chirping of birds, the gradually
clearer waters in rippling brooks--all things done in God's time and
measured by God's timepiece.
No wonder the song says, ``Almost heaven, West Virginia.''
Clocks in West Virginia are set on Eastern Time, Mr. President, but
life in West Virginia is lived largely on ``God's Time'' minus most of
the hurry and bustle, the ulcers, and lost tempers that characterize
the passage of time in so many other places.
Madam President, I have labored hard to help build up the ``economic
infrastructure,'' as we say here in Washington, of my State--to draw
more people and jobs to West Virginia. That is important.
But I hope that West Virginia can grow economically without
sacrificing the unique wonders that render West Virginia unlike any
other place in America or in the world. There in West Virginia, just as
the God-bestowed spring emerges so gradually and so gently, so can a
child grow into manhood or womanhood--as I think God intends us all to
so grow--nurtured in the deepest of human values and caressed by the
richest wonders of Nature--wonders intended for everyone, but so richly
bestowed most generously of all on the people of West Virginia--where
``the wind laughs and murmurs and sings of a land where even the old
are fair and even the wise are merry of tongue.''
Madam President, I invite Senators to visit West Virginia sometime
this spring and invite you to visit the State and witness for yourself
some of the qualities of life that I have described.
But, Madam President, be careful not to tell too many others about
the beauties you see there. Be careful not to reveal how much more
rested you feel after sleeping one night in a West Virginia bed. Be
careful not to talk too much about the friendliness of the people you
might meet in Preston County or in Pendleton County or in Huntington or
Beckley. Take care not to brag too much about the beauty of Greenbrier
County or the magic of Dolly Sods or Seneca Rock or Spruce Knob or
Cranberry Glades. After all, you and I might want to keep a good thing
a secret just between ourselves.
I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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