Month: March 2025

Icy entity of March

Morning revealed the night work of nature’s ice artist while oak leaves shimmered in the glow of sunrise. I thought about March, the month already half over, how we always seem to wish it would just end. Wish it were April.

But March is more than a bridge between winter and spring. We may have to look for its allure, but it does offer more than shrinking snowbanks and rising temperatures. I looked where yesterday’s puddle of melt had turned to ice overnight. Imagine, nature crystalized this piece for my brief enjoyment. In only a matter of hours it would puddle again under the sun’s growing power. 

On this small, hard canvas was ice as smooth as a mirror reflecting the sky, and also ice textured and feathered like a bird’s wingtips. There were delicate shelves of ice, swirls (cat-ice), and wandering wavy lines, like chimney smoke on a calm morning. I stared at the icy creation, seeing a fallen bird, the eyes of a ghost’s upside-down face, and the geographic form of the Red Sea between Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

This intricate piece—one of a kind sculpted in darkness—would soon be water again, its artist in hiding, planning tonight’s design.

I returned to my coffee, where through a breezeway window my eye caught a kitchen window reflecting the morning. The glass was filled with rust-brown oak leaves—a mirrored, blurred image with a blue-sky background. Any slight movement of my head shifted the image. It was fluid, not frozen, a rolling scene of leaves preferring to move sideways, not fall. 

Not yet, not in March. For March, despite home of the vernal equinox, is more winter than spring. Oak leaves hang on to winter’s very end, as do we. The leaves tumble in spring, as we fall head over heels for the season of rebirth.

Oaks, like the beeches, retain their dead leaves in what botanists call marcescence—the retention of dead plant matter. Why? There are theories, only theories stress some, since nature can be coy regarding its ways. Perhaps a spring leaf drop delivers fresh organic matter to the soil under the tree. Perhaps leaf retention protects the tiny buds that formed last fall and now wait to swell in spring, pushing off their winter protector.

But why only oaks and beeches? May it be these species are still evolving into fully deciduous trees from their evergreen roots? Yes, the beech family also includes some evergreens, whose winter needles provide us with greenness when we most need color.

We wait for spring warmth and the color palette it awakens. New life all around us, new life within us, while oak leaves colored and dried last fall wait for their demise. They make their last stand, above puddles that form and freeze, thaw and refreeze, in a month that moves us along in a frustrating tease. 

April will have its own agenda—showers that puddle and not freeze, tree buds swelling into tiny leaves—while icy artwork and spent leaves are swept away in streams of spring.

Note: For more essays like this, my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available by contacting me at davegreschner@icloud.com or 715-651-1638. The book is also available through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tale), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), Cable (Redbery Books),and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Crystal blue persuasion

At least once a winter I go ice fishing to remind myself why I don’t go ice fishing a couple dozen times a winter. Nothing against shacks and waxies, teardrops and tip-ups, or cold beer on a cold lake. It’s just that I prefer my fishing days on soft water when I can hear the plop of the bobber.

That once-a-winter came up on the last day of February, initiated with the text, “You wanna go fishing today?” That would be my brother-in-law’s thumbs typing. I replied in haste, “Yeh!”

Why not? The day promised thawing temperatures, blue sky, and a chickadee breeze, not a hawkish wind that is the bane of the shackless. There we were the next day, on a white canvas dotted with shanties of retreat and heat, gloveless in our pursuit of hooking on waxies to hook up bluegills.

With the sun, the calm, and temperature above freezing, my only other requirements were safe ice—I was assured 30 inches was safe—and someone to power drill holes through those 30 inches; my hand auger has become garage art. Bro-in-law has a gas auger to spit, lickety-split, ice from holes 10 inches across.   

Then I settled in, or I should say settled on, for I sat on the mandatory 5-gallon pail turned upside down. Later, the pail would be used to carry 5 gallons of fish. I hoped. For the time being it was my front row seat to watch a tiny bobber for anything resembling a nibble. I stared at the hole, assuming the ice fishing pose.

Anticipation went down the hole and nothing came up the hole for the first hour. Yet, I was entertained by the lake’s Saturday-in-the-park atmosphere among the ice anglers with nothing much on their mind but enjoying the expansive getaway. Music wafted across the whiteness. We loaded and lowered our waxes to the Doobie Brothers’ “Only A Fool Believes,” followed by Three Dog Night’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” Not exactly tunes to build fishing confidence.

Whatever confidence we brought to the lake began to wane. No amount of angling finagling could bring the fish to light. So out came my brother-in-law’s drone. And beer. A drone went up, a beer went down. 

“You hear that jet?” bro-in-law asked, as if testing my hearing, which indeed could use some testing. Yes, I heard it, and I saw its contrail bubbling behind. He played with his phone. Suspense heightened to the crystal blue sky before he said confidently, “Vancouver to Toronto.”

I inquired about the app, the app I now want to track flight routes of passing jets. Why I don’t know. Then something happened that brought our attention back to lake level—the fish turned on. Ah, crystal blue persuasion.

For an hour we caught bluegills, though many of them were shirt-pocket size. I was hungry for fish, however, so even the borderline catches made the cut. On cue, a real fisherman came by to check our meager catches and let us know he had 15 pounds of fish in his freezer at home. Well, la-di-da came to mind but not to my lips.

He went on to inform me that my bobber was not sensitive enough to catch bluegills. I wanted to say that I didn’t want sensitive bluegills, just the uncomplicated ones that take big gulps. He must have noticed me biting my tongue, assuring me that it wasn’t a good catching day for anyone. So that ended well; misery loves company.

Then the fish quit biting. Just like that. No big deal, for the day was mild and pleasing, the lake a whole different vista than the dirty, melting snowbanks at home. A small jet went over. “Iron Mountain to Minneapolis.” And then the sky was peaceful again, as was the lake, except for vehicles going to shacks. One or two people would disappear into the mystery of the shanty, sometimes with a dog.  

If I go ice fishing only once this winter, this was the day, a good day—one beer, nine bluegills, one new app to explore, and zero cold fingers.

Note: For more essays like this, my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available by contacting me at davegreschner@icloud.com or 715-651-1638. The book is also available through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tale), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), Cable (Redbery Books),and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.