A brief and very pleasant interlude

It’s like Mother Nature shuffled an April day into the February deck: sunshine, blue skies and temperatures above 40℉. Time to eat, drink, scrape, and be merry, for tomorrow we di...ve back into winter. Unseasonably cold temperatures and something like 9 or 10 inches of snow by Tuesday night. Sigh!

If we were enjoying normal temperatures, spring thaw would begin next weekend. The extended forecast doesn’t show anything approaching 30℉, let alone above freezing. In my younger days there was a hit song with the lyrics “you don’t really love me, you just keep me hanging on.” That describes pretty well my relationship with winter weather. Time to work on a breakup speech since a week from today is the penultimate day of meteorological winter.

Here in the North Country, we’re known for having had snow 11 months of the year, although not necessarily in the same year. I’m working on an attitude adjustment about how this winter will help me enjoy spring even more, although so far  this season, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources tells us that the winter severity index has been much less than the seven year moving average. Maybe I need to practice saying “Yes, but it’s a dry cold!”

early migrants return

Photo by J. Harrington

Next month  (a week away!) it’s definitely time to watch for the return of the geese, cranes and red-winged blackbirds. Ice and snow should turn to mud. Trickles will run into flowing water. We saw lots of snowmobiles on trailers headed south toward "The Cities” today. “Permanent” ice houses have to be removed in a couple of weeks in the southern 2/3 of the state and by March 21 up Nort’. The the real angling seasons can be looked forward to.

To One Coming North

By Claude McKay

At first you'll joy to see the playful snow, 

  Like white moths trembling on the tropic air, 

Or waters of the hills that softly flow 

  Gracefully falling down a shining stair.

 

And when the fields and streets are covered white 

  And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw, 

Or underneath a spell of heat and light 

  The cheerless frozen spots begin to thaw,

 

Like me you'll long for home, where birds' glad song 

  Means flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry, 

And tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong, 

  Beneath a vivid silver-flecked blue sky.

 

But oh! more than the changeless southern isles, 

  When Spring has shed upon the earth her charm, 

You'll love the Northland wreathed in golden smiles 

  By the miraculous sun turned glad and warm.

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