In some ways, spring is the ugly stepchild season in Wyoming. You just cannot predict what kind of weather will hit you out here in the West.

         In much of the United States, spring is a time of tilling the soil, putting out flower s and plants and walks in short sleeve shirts.

         But here in Wyoming, spring often offers up something quite different.

Wyoming’s other seasons are quite predictable:

• Summer features long sun-filled days, low humidity, the bluest skies in the country and cool, wonderful nights. It is a time of golf and camping. It is a time of enjoying five hours of daylight after work. It is a time of birds chirping in the crispy, early-morning air.

         • Fall is when the famous brown and gold of Wyoming comes to light. Many visitors and newcomers are often disappointed in the over-abundance of these colors in our landscapes. Veteran Wyomingites feel just the opposite. A great many people prefer fall as their favorite season. It is time for the annual hunting trip, which means heading to the upper country or the open spaces.

         • Winter is snowy and long nights, wind chill factors and occasional closures of major highways. It is a time for snowmobiling, skiing and watching football on TV. It is a time when we all bundle up and make sure we are prepared for any emergency.

         But springtime in Wyoming. Now that is another story.

         Where I live in Fremont County, we just enjoyed a real “spring-like” March, as literally no moisture fell at all.

         Going into March, our mountain snow pack level was above average. Temperatures soared into the 60s and it was sunny much of the time.

         In Fremont County, April is actually our wettest month of the year with lots of wet, heavy snow.

         One thing that is predictable in most of Wyoming during spring is wind. Now, we all know we live in a pretty windy state, but the winds in March and April can be positively hurricane-like.

         Veteran weather watcher Jack States saw his wind gauge get destroyed after it recorded a 65 mph wind gust recently just south of Lander.

The Taco Johns convention center in Cheyenne had $200,000 damage to its roof from a recent hurricane-like windstorm.

         Despite wind, the best parts of spring to me are the baby animals.

         Last year, a doe dropped her fawn right in front of me. Then she ran away. The fawn got up and hobbled over to me. Whoa! I am not your momma. I scrambled away and soon the doe came back to claim her offspring.

         We have a pair of geese who have taken over our pond in preparation for their egg laying and hatching. They have been here each year for a decade.

         Ornery things, they are. They drive our ducks crazy.

Speaking of ducks, it is positively X-rated around our back yard as the drakes have their way with the females. I call one of them Bill Hendrickson (after the HBO show Big Love), because he seems to have a harem of hens he calls his own. Oh what a sight! One of our females is named TP (for Town Pump). Enough on that subject.

         Recently the creek that runs by our property was plugged up by a beaver dam. Such dams are amazing pieces of work. Another sign of spring.

         One of my favorite activities with my grandkids is looking for antlers. Found three nice racks recently and the boys found some, too. Sort of a modified Easter Egg Hunt, in my opinion.

         I didn’t know that veteran collectors call antlers “sheds.” I have some old buildings on my land. A few years ago a neighbor no doubt looked at me funny as he was mentioning the nice sheds on my property. “No,” I replied. “They are dumpy. I really need to do something about them.”

         This year spring seemed to come way too early but that was because Daylight Savings Time arrived so soon. These chilly mornings were hard to get used to until you realized that it was really just 7 a.m. instead of the 8 a.m. that your watch showed.

         For a long time I swore that spring was the worst season in Wyoming. It is unpredictable. It is windy. And it is muddy.

         Perhaps it is sign of accepting my old age that this year I really welcomed spring. Even if it was one of those volatile, capricious and fickle ones, at that.

"The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle."  John Adams

         Despite the interruption in the 24-hour news cycle by that horrific disaster in Japan, the world has been watching the amazing and painful birthing of democracy in Arab countries over the past eight months.

         And coincidentally, the last two books that I read were 1776 and John Adams, both by David McCullough. Both are considered among the best histories written about the founding of our country.

         So what is the connection between what was contained in those books and what is happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and possibly other countries?

         According to John Adams over 235 years ago, “people want to be free” and they want to “govern themselves.” Adams contended reasonable men conclude ultimately that they should be governed by laws, not by the whims of men who accidentally became their rulers.

         Watching these efforts to create democracy in the Arab and African countries, in comparison to the context of the history of American democracy, tells amazing stories of providence, coincidence, luck and timing. 

         Without aids like modern cell phones, the Internet, Facebook, Twitter and other means of instant communication, the earliest patriots of our country, instead, just never gave up. They just refused to roll over.  

If odds were being established back in the 18^th century, there would be little belief that a small distant frontier place like America could prevail over the strongest power in the world.

         Perhaps the key thing, as pointed out by the 90-year old Adams, in a letter to fellow patriot Thomas Jefferson, was that so many key leaders were in the right place at the right time in America during that extraordinary time around 1776 and beyond.

         When tumultuous events are examined, whether as they are happening today or 235 years ago, it becomes so important that key leaders rise to the occasion.

         One of the biggest concerns of most observers of what has been recently happening in these countries today is identifying the leaders.

         Where is their John Adams? 

         The book 1776 was especially poignant. It detailed the incredible trials that Washington and his soldiers endured to prevail over the British.      

         On two occasions, it was thought the War was over as the Redcoats had Washington trapped. In each case, a daring escape and retreat saved the Continental army.

Biggest victory was at Trenton on Christmas Day when Washington and his men crossed the frozen Delaware River and ambushed thousands of Hessian soldiers (paid German mercenaries) and captured tons of gunpowder and firearms.

         Although we obviously know the result, McCullough’s book is a nail-biter. How could the American volunteers survive against such an overwhelming force? One third of Washington’s soldiers were barefoot in the winter, if you can imagine. Gunpowder had to be imported and the British had 400 ships blockading American harbors.

         Meanwhile to me, it was impossible to read John Adams without thinking about these fledgling democratic efforts occurring today around the world.

         Good men prevailed here in the USA during our revolution but the biggest blight that assailed Adams was slavery. There were over two million slaves in the colonies at that time. But he accepted it grudgingly in the hope that in the future, it would be eradicated. His patience paid off.

         I would assume that in these new Arab countries a similar critical issue would be how to accept women’s role in society? Women are still oppressed in many of these places and that will be a key issue as they move toward freedom and democracy.

         Out here in Wyoming a lot of what is happening around the world can seem so far away. But thanks to modern TV and the Internet, we are watching those efforts in real time. Amazing to see tyrants falling before our eyes.

         Following are a couple of my favorite quotes from Adams that I thought spoke volumes:

         "Democracy while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide."

         And:

"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it."

         History has shown that events occurring as far as 8,000 miles away can have a huge ripple effect on our local Wyoming economy. Although it is easy to think of our state as an isolated place out on the frontier, the truth is that worldwide catastrophes affect everyone on the planet.

         And so, it might be hard to imagine that an earthquake in way-off Japan could hamper efforts to develop Wyoming’s rapidly growing uranium industry, but it sure could.

         This feels much like the 1979 Three-Mile Island nuclear core meltdown in the USA and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine. The problems this week with nuclear power plants in Japan, in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami, could spell disaster for our mining efforts here.

This feels like history repeating itself.

Back in the early 1980s, we had more than 1,500 Fremont County people employed in the uranium mining industry. Big pit mines in Jeffrey City southeast of Lander and in the Gas Hills east of Riverton provided a huge stimulus to the economy.

Even a tiny spot in the road called Home on the Range (it had its own zip code of that name) became a booming city of 5,000 people. It was re-named in honor of a Dr. Jeffrey of Rawlins who was a big investor in the project by mine owner Bob Adams of Western Nuclear.

         Heck, I even started a newspaper there with current Worland Northern Wyoming Daily News Publisher Lee Lockhart as the first publisher. The town also had a Lions Club, its own bank, a Chamber of Commerce and a volunteer fire department.

         I first met the recently retired and powerful CEO of the Tri-State Generation System, Hub Thompson, when he operated a liquor store in Jeffrey City.

         But it all went away when the prices crashed.

         Most folks link that price drop to the Three –Mile Island incident and the movie The China Syndrome. My recollection is that it was the unexpected decision by the U. S. government to allow nuclear plants to import uranium from Australia and Russia. The market prices for yellowcake crashed. The mining stopped. Jeffrey City virtually disappeared. Our boom turned into a bust.

And I moved our newspaper to the reservation where it was re-born as the weekly Wind River News.

         No more American nuclear plants were built, though, and that situation resulted in a terrific energy boom for Wyoming. 

         It is no coincidence that the surge in the use of Wyoming coal across the land occurred in the wake of the nuclear plants’ demise.

         And so, it will happen again.

         A state Bureau of Land Management official asked me recently why I had not written about the uranium boom in Wyoming? Some initial checking showed a terrific upside. 

         Wyoming is already the largest uranium-producing state in the USA and those numbers were poised to surge.

         But will that continue, now that the TV newscasts are full of scenes of “exploding” nuclear plants in Japan?

         These terrible problems in Japan could actually bode well for Wyoming’s other energy industries.

         Efforts were already underway to export Wyoming coal across the Pacific to markets in Japan, China and India. Now pressure will continue to mine more coal and send it far from the continental USA. Obviously, you would think our state lawmakers would be aware of this and be thinking of re-doing the current formulas for figuring severance taxes. Well, no.

         Despite President Barack Obama’s efforts to shift this country to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, the big vocal trend up to last week had been about building new nuclear plants. 

         Now such talk will disappear, which is too bad. I am a big fan of small nuclear plants that can provide power for about 50,000 homes. Now that would make sense. We’ll see if anyone has the stomach to even try something like that.

         Back in the late 1980s, Wyoming business leaders tried to make a spot near Shoshoni as the temporary storage site for spent nuclear fuel rods. Former Gov. Mike Sullivan squashed that project in 1992.

         Insiders on that effort confided to me that their end game was to create an enrichment plant using those spent fuel rods as the base fuel. Such plants exist in France and are huge economic generators.

         Right now, I would not be very comfortable having a plant like that in my back yard, after watching those scenes on TV of what is happening in Japan.