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Even with the flu and cold season waning, enduring a stubborn winter run that resulted in yours truly struggling with a stubborn cold for almost 3 months, this new bug needs no flu shot, aspirin or antibiotics! The only remedy is found in warm days and balmy nights. It seems to be an annual occurrence as the days grow longer, affecting everyone I know.
Symptoms include a feelings of the walls closing in, an internal urge to shed layers, return heavy jackets to a closet life, the urge to roll down truck windows or gaze skyward at the raucous sound of a quacking hen mallard being tailed by two drakes with love in their eyes. You might notice a stack of spinning and casting rods having sat quietly alongside Hummingbird electronics for the past 5 months that are again oozing with a subtle beckoning voice saying “I miss you, please pick me up again!” Turkey decoys that have sat folded in boxes catch a gaze and there’s an urge to open the hunting closet to check on the camouflage turkey vest contents. Sometimes in quiet moments a mental notepad etches a reminder to replace the Browning improved cylinder choke with one stamped full hoping to soon tip over another tom turkey.
For some this spring fever includes sounds not heard for what suddenly seems to be a lifetime of months. The prehistoric gargling of sandhill cranes, songs of Red-Wing Blackbirds having staked out a territory to guard, a mournful wail of a recently returned loon in the twilight of a dark evening in search of her partner, woodies deftly winding between the trees only to land on the roof of a potential house newly filled with dry shavings ready for an occupant, are each signs spring fever may be close. Another annual spring ritual is the never-ending search for the elusive morel and wild asparagus as a side coupled with a meal of fresh panfish.
Is this the antidote for the fever?
For some spring fever means a new garden planted, the sweet smell of lilacs in bloom. For others, myself included, it’s the annual alert for ticks and, for still others, hard water that gives way to soft. A sound of gentle waves lapping at a shoreline or wild windy white-capped waters which seems to be Mother Nature again saying to be careful within her world. But for me, and perhaps you too, one of the most telling spring fever medications is the process of opening the cabin.
Water gets turned back on, winters’ dust is wiped away, the dock is put back where it belongs and the lift again sits waiting the weight it cradles above the waves.
This year spring fever arrived early, then was overshadowed by old man winter with his cold snow and ice returning grips but, perhaps now with the sun gaining strength, the ritual and fever we have come to look forward to and enjoy will arrive for yet another year.
Oh yeah one more thing to look forward to is the return of the Fan Outdoors “Cabin Cast!” On this one you are each invited to come along as my personal guests! Coffee and Coke are my “double fistin’ treat!”
Are you ready?
Capt’n