Wild Trails & Tall Tales

-by Roland Cheek

 

MARCH SIGNALS ARE MIXED

March ranks high on my un-favorite list. The month means the mud of spring break-up and highway potholes to trap tanks. March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. But in Montana, lions and lambs sometimes lay down together on the same day. And inevitably Simba exits into April, picking his teeth.

March is end-of-the-woodpile month, and track-gumbo-in-the-house month. It's a period when the foolhardy among us slip into a pair of shorts and wind up sun burning the tops of our goose pimples.

March is stir-crazy month, when no man is worth being nurtured into adulthood and no woman can be cajoled into pandering to their helpmeet's needs in the first place. It's when female Attila the Huns tie up their hair with kerchiefs and directs furniture arrangement with a wet mop in one hand and a straw broom in the other, accompanying the funereal waltz with running commentary of admonishment and complaint.

Still, March does have its high points. It's just that one must look for points to admire harder than in May or September. March is "herds of animals" month; time for our annual Glacier Park's St. Mary's elk watch and if we're lucky, a chance to eyeball bighorn sheep while skiing up Swiftcurrent Valley.

March is first-buttercup-of-spring competition between Jane and me. And from there it's a race to see who finds the first spring beauty and parsley and birdbill. April? Naah. It's no fun competing when multiple first flowers pop up every day.

March is when horses snooze in the sun while north-bound flights of Canadas honk overhead. It's a month where I'm prone to examine--on the hour, every hour--stark tree branches for their first buds of the season; pray for the brown drabness of roadway barrow ditches to again turn green; am constantly in search for the cerulean splash of that first illusive bluebird. And I mope until all three are in hand, pledging my future life to legendary accomplishments ... just as soon as sun and moon and stars and chlorophyll and bluebirds all align.

If only ambition could be bottled come March, in order to provide energy needed when plowing and tilling and mowing and pruning is nigh. March, you see, has its place. No telling what would happen to psyches or sacroiliacs if the pulse from winter's forced leisure to spring's frantic pace wasn't delayed by the third month in order to accommodate our physical acclimation.

Still, Jane has never quite lived down the ignominy of having her garden club committee stuck amid the spring break-up of our March driveway. And I haven't yet forgotten those highway potholes and the busted main-spring on my old stock truck. But who wants to accentuate the negative? After all, I won this spring's race with my wife, stooping to pluck the first buttercup just as the first bluebird fluttered past on his way from fence post to chokecherry branch to bluebird house nailed to the far pasture post.

Though this season's first hardy yellow flower is clutched in my palm, I'm in no dither to rush back to the house in order to flourish my find. No indeed. When I left, the woman was tying a bright red kerchief around her hair. And a mop and broom stood near to hand.

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