I woke up on April 1 trying to think of an April Fool’s joke I could play on wife Carmen but nature beat me to it.
The thermometer stated 17 below.
Is this not damn cold up in this neck of the woods for this time of year?
It was our first winter in the Cariboo and they told us it was the coldest April in 50 years.
Cold I can handle, it’s dry, not like on the Sunshine Coast where we came from. (Now there’s a misnomer if there ever was one.) It was rain, rain, rain and more rain. One of the reasons why we left.
I’m thinking isn’t it the sun’s responsibility to warm things up? As if taking umbrage things improved a little when the sun got farther up in the sky. Besides the dogs didn’t seem to mind the freezing weather.
It certainly didn’t have any effect on their barking, sending little puffs of breath into the air. Carmen straining to see the first inklings of flower stubs to appear in the garden was dismayed.
You can’t see anything under two feet of snow. Paul St. Pierre once said that: “the cure for optimism is still to be found.”
After all, the first day of spring is the 20 of March. It says so on the calendar.
Yet there are red wing blackbirds showing up at the feeder and the faint honking of geese high overhead, ducks in the river scooting about.
A sure sign of spring. It’s just that spring has yet to take notice.
“Oh well things will warm up in a day or two,” I opined.
(Mind you, I think I said that four or five weeks back and again three weeks ago, maybe even yesterday.)
I am sure the more ardent birders will be out full force nevertheless.
Decked out in their funny hats, notepad in hand, binoculars draped over the chests. Those with a particular fondness for warblers are known as warbler wackos. I am eager to join them.
Birding by the way, is the second most popular sport after golf.
But in truth, this is a sport that curtails laziness and slothfulness and gets one out into the wilds with a zest for their quarry that would rival a kid with a mouthful of Big Whopper hamburger.
This is the time of year when cabin fever gains a foothold on our psyches. Just when you want to run around the yard and yell “spring is here!”, it isn’t.
However, on the good side, it has prolonged the ice-fishing season, that is if you want to freeze your butt off trying to entice a fat, sluggish, oxygen-deprived fish to take the bait.
Robert Nichol is a freelance columnist with the Tribune/Advisor.