Most anyone acquainted with the diabolical handiwork of the weather gods of New England knows that to anticipate an early spring is to practically guarantee that the mother of all snowstorms will sweep down upon us when we least expect it, sending us psychologically two months back into the middle of January.
Still, it seems obvious from the signs all around us that something is afoot, early-springwise. Rapidly deteriorating ice conditions on our lakes have forced the cancellation of fishing derbies, snowmobiling in many parts of the state is a lost cause, state and municipal highway crews are out patching potholes and marking frost heaves, the high school post-season basketball tournaments are history and the first crocuses have poked their snouts through the ground on the sunny side of the house.
The calendar may note that official spring is two weeks off, but in our bones we know better, and we can only become more confident that we are barking up the right tree when, eight days hence, we set our clocks ahead an hour. Soon, farmers will begin working the land.
Comparatively warm days and brisk nights have prodded the upland maple trees to begin producing sap to be distilled into sweet syrup and have turned the snow-covered fields in this neck of the woods to a hardy early-morning crust several weeks earlier than normal.
The situation encourages confirmed crust walkers to make the most of an opportunity to wander madly off in all directions, exploring the countryside o’er hill and dale from a perspective not possible in the snowless months when the real estate is occupied by The County’s main cash crops of potatoes, broccoli and grain.
In summer, one does not walk cross-country in a haphazard or spontaneous manner, but must restrict such excursions to farm road or headland. Although this version of the off-road trek is hardly a good walk spoiled, as Mark Twain is purported to have said of the game of golf, it simply does not have the cachet of a grand tour on the crusted snow of late winter and early spring.
As I strode under a big sky on Tuesday morning’s first walkable crust of the season, it occurred to me that it won’t be long until mud and baseball arrive to complete the seasonal trifecta, allowing northland optimists to declare that spring has arrived regardless of what the calendar might indicate.
I am reminded of an article extolling the month of March that I discovered in an Old Farmer’s Almanac published by Yankee Publishing Inc. of Dublin, N.H., in 1994. I suspect that many a reader who grew up in simpler times might relate to the anonymous author’s experiences in those bygone early days of spring.
“Within a couple of weeks after the new year turns the Spring Equinox, my bailiwick is ready to be visited by two of New England’s most cherished institutions: Mud and baseball,” the piece begins. Children dig out the bats and balls as soon as the snow is two-thirds gone. Spring training becomes an adventure in battling the elements.
“It’s cold work, for one thing. The field is wet and the water that saturates it turns to ice at night,” the author writes. “Balls hit sharply on the ground splash through the infield like ducks taking off from a pond. By the second inning, the players, the dog, the fans are as muddy as plow horses. Few mud-time games go the full nine; you can’t play well when you can’t feel your fingers or feet for cold. We have had more than one game called on account of snow.
“I pitch. I chase balls that come near where I am. Balls hit into the outfield, balls hit over the wall into the pasture, balls hit beyond the house must be chased by the batter, after the dog loses interest. Those are the rules …”
The author notes that those are the rules because the narrator is older and far less energetic than the kids at play. “At the Pastime I’m as good as I’m ever going to be, whereas the others each year throw farther, hit harder, run faster.
“The annual advent of baseball at this changing time of the year seems to gain on me faster than it does on the rest of the squad. Their muscles, their minds switch into spring instantly on the day the bats and the balls come out. Mine take longer.”
BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may reach him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.