Big Spring Day

•July 31, 2024•

by Janet Roney

Big Spring Township, Shelby County, Illinois, was soft, tender, and flooded with new life that May day in 1999. There were no hard edges, even on the dissolving lichen covered sandstone tombstones in Spain Cemetery. 

It was like being in a wet-in-wet watercolor as it was painted all around us. Low hanging clouds of Paynes Gray seeped into the Thalo Green tree line on the far south edge of the Little Wabash River bottom, mixing the colors. Low rumbling thunder, dampened by the spongy atmosphere, pulsed softly from just over the horizon to the west. A ray of diffused sunlight penetrated the flowing energy of the approaching storm, warming us in yellow green light as we watched from Spain Cemetery Hill.

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