Another View

In praise of February

BY JOE MCFARLAND

Outdoorsmen long for this month of February, despite the enduring notion that suggests there's little to do during these dreary four weeks, other than to brood indoors and sort fishing lures. February happens to be the most beautiful of all months. In fact, at a time when the whole of nature huddles against the bleak onslaught of winter's finale, some outdoorsmen are ecstatically happy to be alive.

True, it's technically accurate to say February does deliver us 28 continuous days of mud and cold sleet and leafless trees. And it's a fact most lakes are now slush-filled, inhospitable beds of weak ice. And most would agree fields are, indeed, a dark landscape of cold, brown stubble. But all of this is a beautiful thing. Outdoorsmen love this month called February, the perfect month of non-opportunity.

To celebrate, those of us who hunt and fish or enjoy nature remain indoors, poking at crackling fireplaces or sharpening fish hooks, mindlessly passing our days in idle, homebound satisfaction. Most importantly, in February, nobody named Crenshaw can burst into the office on Monday and announce how he caught 172 slab crappie over the weekend. And he can't brag about how the crappie were all so enormous that any one of them could have been sent to a taxidermist for mounting. Or how the crappie were so plentiful that even small, unskilled children were lifting them out of the water with ease.

"Ha! You sure missed the boat, McFarland!" is something somebody named Crenshaw can't say during February. Not that this example arises from personal experience by any means.

We're just talking theoretical here. This is just to say that certain things don't happen to outdoorsmen in February, including having a guy named Crenshaw call you up at 7 p.m. on a Saturday to announce—or crow about, if you want a better term—how he just bagged a 14-point buck in the same woods you happen to hunt, and how that big buck strolled right up to his tree and how the taxidermist said it was the biggest mount he'd seen in 27 years.

Not that this is anything but a speculative illustration; this is just to say that February is a beautiful month which some of us happen to enjoy. During February, nobody named Crenshaw stops by your house on a Friday night to show off a 40-pound catfish he just hauled in from the Pecatonica River. Or say how the catfish were so easy to catch that even small children, ones who had little interest in fishing and rarely minded their poles, were standing along the bank and were landing 10 pounders.

And nobody named Crenshaw can wave the huge catfish under your nose and say, "Ha! Who's the better fisherman, now, McFarland? I believe it's Crenshaw! That's right, Crenshaw!"

Not that this is anything a writer might stew about in the off-season, letting it occupy his thoughts and smolder. This is just to say that February is the most perfect month in nature. Does it have to end?

Joe McFarland is a free-lance writer from Benton.

February 2000  7