Winter's End? A Year Ago, not Now

Lookin’ Ahead… Lookin’ Back
At Pre-spring Character…
By Lynn Kuhns
That perennial roller-coaster journey from February through March has begun. And we’re all in it together — a soaring and depressing, swirling and lulling, tummy-tumblin’ and nap-inducing head-over-heels thrill of a ride on toward summer.
What’s next, weather wise? Heck, we don’t know. What should I wear today? Wait and see... somewhere between shorts and a snowmobile suit, probably. What’s there to do? Oh, jeez, a lot! And then again, nothin’ much, really.
Alternately we’re sweetly swaddled in, and then harshly startled by contrasts: it’s first sunny and eye-ouch-bright, then solemn and cloud-shielded dark; it’s all warm and inviting, then frigid and life-threatening.
And because we live here and love it, we can take it all…from the menacing frozen tundra sneering at our four-wheel drive, to the mud-swashed gullies preparing to present us with tender pussy willows and spring flowers.
That capricious changeability must do something profound to each of us…to our styles and our souls.
Are we hardened and tempered, or worn down and made weary by it all? Effected by this season’s unpredictable challenges and its generous blessings, we each take a different something from its uneasiness
We know that nothing is certain on any one day in time — not the arrival of spring; not the departure of winter. But the seasons do flow and spring will chase winter and summer will come shining through. Exactly when…well, we just can’t expect to know.
Mostly, we humans like things at least moderately predicable. Who’ll be at the Fin this Friday? Where’ll the fish biting? Will I get a “B” in English this quarter? Will you still love me tomorrow?
But here in the mighty northward reach of the Midwest, we know better than to even think that we’ll know what tomorrow’s weather will be like.
It seems some of us even thrive on not-knowing what’s beyond that cloud bank at the dawn of any March day, or what’s sweeping down from Canada or up from California, or whether the sun will show itself at all. Most of us can take it.
Back on the opening (and only up-river) day of surgeon spearing, Terry, my dog Snowflake and I headed out from our boathouse to take a walk on the lake just off Lasley Shore Drive, where County highway G dips into the lake.
For several days before, hundreds of trucks, vans, cars, snowmobiles and four-wheelers where driving in a procession of motorized hope down our quiet little road and on out onto the lake. Some towed shanties, others drove out to help set up, or just to take a look at the unique tiny-house city that was being erected.
On that clear and windless upriver spearing day, the only clouds were a gentle smoke-grey wisp settled over toward the southwest. Everywhere the rich winter sun glistened on snow-topped ice.
Even so, as hopes of harvesting a sturgeon warmed many an eager soul, I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t part of that parade of patience. We’d been busy with the details of a new house and time got away from us.
I surmised that most of those shanty-toting, ice-sawing, spear-in-hand friends on the lake also had had plenty of stuff to do before the season opened. But they hadn’t let that stop them and I promised myself we wouldn’t have an excuse next time.
I understood then that sturgeon-spearing and anything that’s seasonal and whirling in our annual mercurial churn must be embraced then and there — no matter what else there is to do, no matter what the weather may become.
I was just happy to be out there, enjoying a bright and friendly winter’s day and talking to the spearers we met, who all where happy to share their triumphs and frustrations.
One was a neighbor, who, with his dad, had speared a large female and a male sturgeon that morning. We talked under the winter sun for a good half-hour and later that night, I saw the same guys featured on a television show about sturgeon spearing. Small, wonderful Winneconne world.
That winter’s day —with its come-and-go pageant of vehicles, its super-amped winter sun, and all the sharing and caring people waiting under frosted air warmed with the hope and excitement of doing something that few else in the whole world would ever be able to do — was as fun, feverish and festive as any Fourth of July party.
The next day, though, the sky was the color of decayed liver; the wind furiously hounding the river waves, the air thick with a darker, colder, more desolate and ferocious kind of winter.
The few empty shanties that remained on the ice would be gone, I guessed, by tomorrow.
So it is, where we live. And so we like it… or we don’t.