Right now it’s sunny outside, about twelve hours before the next storm strikes.  I should grab my snowshoes and take advantage of this break in the weather.  But that’s not where my heart lies.  Last night I dreamed of a mountain stream teeming with large, wild trout.  And this morning, well, let’s just say the view out my window doesn’t match the fantasy.

Stepping outdoors for a moment to start up my wife’s car, I hear a cardinal singing loudly from atop a leafless maple.  He’s thinking the same thing I’m thinking.  And the warm morning sun assures us both that spring can’t be that far away.  But all this snow . . . egads!

Judy and I have a late-winter ritual: when the snow is deep outside, we cook and eat the last of the trout that I brought home the previous summer.  Granted, I’m mostly a catch-and-release fisherman these days, but I make sure to bring home a few of them just for this occasion.  We ate the trout a couple weeks ago.  And that’s just about the time I started yearning for the warm season.

This morning I opened the newspaper and learned that the writer/naturalist John Hay just died.  This news sent me to my bookshelves right away.  I cracked open The Immortal Wilderness where I had it bookmarked and reread this:  “Behind the world so recklessly and uncertainly claimed by politics and economics lie the magic and inexorable laws of the wilderness, known to every life.  The flower is wiser than the machine.”  My sentiments exactly.  So now I’m dreaming of wildflowers as well as trout.  Right now I don’t give a damn about the government’s budgetary problems, the health care debacle, or the price of oil.  I just want to see a brook trout and a purple trillium again.

Is this cabin fever talking?  You bet it is.  But there’s no sense stewing in it.  So I’ll strap on my snowshoes and make the best of the situation.  My dog Matika is ready to roll.  Unlike me, she lives in the moment.  She will romp in the snow as if it’s the first powder of the season.  And I will follow, somewhat reluctantly, dreaming of spring.

Before crawling out of bed this morning, I felt it: the urge to wander aimlessly through the forest.  Some days the urge is greater than it is other days.  This morning it is especially strong so I’ll head for the hills as soon as possible.  Snowshoes or no, I’ll bolt as soon as I’ve taken care of any pressing business.  Or maybe I’ll say to hell with work and just bolt.

Some people call it cabin fever; I think of it more as a wild urge.  The mind can be a wild place and I’m comfortable living in my abstractions most of the time, especially during the colder months.  But there comes a time when even the wildest thoughts are not enough.  At such times the short walk I take during my midday errand running seems more like a prisoner’s daily hour in the yard than a bona fide outing.  Then I know it’s time to bolt.

The mind can be just as wild as the body.  Most people don’t get that.  They think wildness involves lawlessness, irrational behavior or sexuality.  Sometimes it does, but there’s much more to thinking wild than that.  I call it creative thought, at the risk of confusing it with purely artistic urges.  But I digress.  There are times when wild thoughts simply do not suffice.  There are times when the body must be as free as the mind.

So enough blather already.  A wild urge isn’t placated by abstraction.  I call myself a woods wanderer because, when push comes to shove, that’s what I have to do to keep from going crazy.  Words fail me.  I’ve gotta go.