People who work outdoors, which includes most agricultural folks, are on a first-name basis with the weather. March, by any other name, would still smell like mud.

MARCH MADNESS

March is the castor oil of months. The collected drippings of winter’s oil change. The epic flush of the accumulated compaction of salted streets, sanded roads, gravelly snow, and frozen manure. It is the longest month of the year when you calculate in the miserable factor. March is not a month to expect a kind word from.

It has its own ides. But what ides are they? I can tell you: fungicide, blindside, cyanide, vilified, terrified, stupefied, snide, hide, lied, cried, died, back you up against the wall and leave you flat and down, afoot and weak, and chapped and squinty-eyed ides.

In most of cow country, it is a month to survive. A hold-your-own month. A can’t-see-the-barn-from-the-house month. A soggy, windy, coughing, runny-nosed month.

March is how you feel at the end of a three-day hunt in the Bob Marshall Wilderness without a razor, toothbrush, hot water, clean socks, or soap. “I haven’t combed my hair for a week. I’ve been sleeping in my clothes, and I smell like dirty sheets, smoke, and King Kong’s sneakers. I feel so, oh, I don’t know, so . . . March.”

March is the interrogator at the Kremlin, “So, you thought winter was ohfur. . . . You foolish farmer . . . sure you luffed February, Valentine’s Day, sunny mornings, happy faces. But you forgot about me! Neffer again!” Then it whacks you with a three-foot snowfall that pulls down entire forests, melts in half a day flooding your pens—which are already saturated—and buries your tractor in a mudslide, blocking the road.

Surely, you say, somebody likes March. Plumbers maybe. Everything is thawing out and breaking. Travel agents like March, selling cruises to the Bahamas to indentured sufferers from Grand Forks, Grand Junction, and Grand Rapids who have enough money to leave. And psychiatrists in Grand Forks, Grand Junction, and Grand Rapids would like March because they service those remaining sufferers who can’t afford to leave.

March is like playing tug-of-war with a team of walruses. They don’t have to cheat to win. There is no way to beat March. So we just have to let it happen, and occasionally we’ll get lucky and it will let us win a hand. We should accept it graciously but never drop our guard. March is not to be trusted.