Feature Article March 13, 2003
LAND O' LAKES NewsWeb HomeMarch is really the cruellest monthby Jack the Weatherman
T.S. Eliot started his famous poem The Wasteland with the now famous phrase April is the Cruellest Month. He obviously never lived through a Canadian March.
Eliot was writing about the contrast between the promise of the weather and the despair of the human condition. Our weather in March, and it happens every year, is all about the contrast between our expectations that the weather will moderate and the reality that March is as fickle and difficult as December.
There is always a sunny, warm day in late February, I think its the 26th, the 27th on a leap year, when we walk around, unbutton our winter coats, hear a few chirping birds, and tell ourselves that Feburary is over, March has come and spring is just around the corner. March leads us on, playing on that expectation, and then crushes that hope by the time its ides are near.
This year has been harsh because we have actually had a cold winter. We now remember what its like to hover around the stove or the heat register all day because the cold is seeping in through the exterior walls. We had been lulled to sleep by a series of mild winters, fraught with constant slush, but no bone-chilling cold. But even with global warming the odd cold winter is bound to arrive. For any who argue this weather is proof that global warming is a crock, they should remember the adage one good day does not a season make, and in global time one winter is like a minute.
Muddy April will come, the ice will melt. Syruping will be followed by gardening, gardening by cottaging, and cottaging by hunting.
March will come again as well, and we will forget once again that March is a winter month, the winter month that comes when we have all lost all sentimentality about the glories of wood heat and are sick of filling the stove and dumping ashes.
