MARCH MADNESS

I woke up this morning and it was snowing AGAIN!!!!…….come on, its the first day of spring. I returned home from Sunsport in Florida just in time for some more great nude snowshoeing out my back door in the Blue Hills reservation here in Boston. John and I had pushed out nude on snowshoes for a few hours under our first warm sun since November into the Middlesex Fells reservation two weeks ago just before I boarded a plane to Florida. I jumped at that one just in case all of the snow might be gone upon my return. We had a wonderful shuffle together . This morning, it was three hours naked on snow shoes on a Saturday morning during a spring snow storm and not a soul in the woods. Breaking some trails that hadn't seen human passage since probably January. Still almost two feet of snow out there in many places. My 90 year old aunt in Connecticut just wrote us about the crocuses blooming up through the snow there beside her home. She remarked "spring is on the way". Well it takes a determined imagination to buy that here in Massacusetts just yet, but 30 degrees and no wind, not the brutal 0 degrees and raw wind of just three weeks ago. I suppose that I could be talked in to believing it.

A wonderful romp through a late winter snowy NE landscape between gently falling snow flakes and bright spring sun peaking through the clouds occasionally. Soft snow flakes kissing my warm body, wet ice dripping off flanking small spruces onto my shoulders, snow kicked up off the tails of the snowshoes, teasing my naked butt. Following the passage of deer, fox and bobcat by their tracks left in the snow, while a solitary woodpecker was busy working a tree trunk overhead. My version of March Madness. Fits me to a T. But I am ready to head off to something warmer again to escape the six weeks of perpetual March that we must endure here every year. Someday, the printed calendars will get it right! I don't buy the four weeks BS that they all peddle.

Diane and I are headed to Holland at the end of the coming week for ten days on a Viking inland waters cruise of the Netherlands. Spring Tulips! her bucket list item. My pleasure. 50sF and light breezes sweeping in off the North Atlantic over the Zyder Zee (I know, that name was lost when the Dutch sealed it off from the open Atlantic long ago, but I'm old school) Not exactly 85 degrees in West Palm Beach Florida, but I'll take it!

Naked Cheers everyone.

-Dan