Lingering ice stirs a madness in Minnesota

People at this time of year often fall victim to a seasonal funk. Goings-on at the Capitol are an obvious bummer. Also the Northwest-Delta deal, the struggling Wild, global warming, Iraq, gas prices, the economy.

Here's the bigger problem: We have too little open water.

It's a proven medical fact that people require waves and lots of them. The view across Mille Lacs in winter, flat and white, full of mystery, is pleasing in its way. But no more. Now our collective consciousness requires lake surfaces formed into gentle undulations or dangerously astir. Fluidity is the point. Ice really needs to go away, and with it all things winter.

Bill Farmer once said if you live in Minnesota you should never make a major decision in January, February or March. Farmer was a onetime St. Paul Pioneer Press humor columnist who ultimately proved funnier than his editors were tolerant. But his belief that people residing above 45 degrees north latitude were imbalanced so severely in winter they risked endangering themselves and others through chronically poor judgment was pure genius. "Witness," he said, "the Legislature."

The other day I stood by a river, trout fishing, fly rod in hand. Not a lake with its waves folding onto themselves in the near distance; not a lake with its evening loons and morning reflections and coffee on the dock; not a lake with its walleyes and jigs and crankbaits and livewells full of shore lunch.

Not that, instead a river, its broad bends and chuckling riffles balmlike in their effect.

Still, it was not a lake. In summer. In Minnesota.

The late author and ecologist Sigurd Olson believed that people differ in their needs for wild places and wild things. He said this in print more than once. I first heard it in his back yard. I lived in Ely at the time, and Sig would puff on his pipe beneath a canopy of leafy trees and talk in the broad strokes of someone who saw the big picture.

But on this point I disagreed. I believed universal exposure to nature was all that was needed to achieve universal appreciation of it. I believe this less so now, and think Sig was correct. People are in fact different, one to another, in all ways, including their love for water and birds and land and the sky above.

An exception might be the demarcation separating winter from spring. Everyone senses it -- at least everyone who lives as far north as we do. Anticipates it might be more accurate, its physical and psychological inklings coalescing initially in late February as a sort of funky, intuitive longing. Clinical diagnosis is possible a month later. Calamitous decision-making might indeed be an indicator of trouble afoot. General irritability can be another, often manifesting itself as a desire to coldcock anything that moves. Also all manner of personal weaknesses often are played out at this time of year, prolonged visits to online chat rooms, logging in under the pseudonym Raoul, among them.

In my case I knew I was in trouble when I sold my boat. I had picked up one too many brochures at the Boat Show in January. The photos were so colorful and the boats with their mechanically flawless outboards so pretty. People in these sleek craft were laughing and fish were everywhere and women wore bathing suits suggesting carefree lives otherwise unknown to me. Also there was water, plenty of it and bluer than blue. One brochure soon became five, then 10, one or two for every room of the house. Junkies can only dream of the exhilaration I felt.

I knew I had to buy something.

Selling pickups and boats for cash always brings interesting characters to the door. Years ago I unloaded a Jeep to a Wisconsin farmer who insisted most men die on the toilet immediately following Thanksgiving dinner. As he said this he handed me $4,800 in crisp $100 bills. The money's long gone, but to this day I come grudgingly to the table in November.

Anyway, I sold my boat. Then I ordered another. Money was no object. I wanted only for the brochures to come to life, and with it the cobalt water of summer and the jigs and crankbaits and shore lunch in the live well.

The other day when I was trout fishing, fly rod in hand, the sun seemed to hang higher in the sky than ever. Or maybe it was my imagination. Perhaps I only wished it so. Mille Lacs after all was still covered with ice, and farther north, Leech also, and Upper Red and certainly Lake of the Woods, where ice fishing continues apace.

But there's hope. Days are warmer. The legislative session is winding down. I've got a new boat coming.

Open water can't be far behind.