Northern residents are beginning to feel the Itch again as Spring Approaches

Feeling the Itch to get back here as Spring approaches

Northern residents are beginning to feel the itch again as spring approaches and beckons us to return to a landscape no longer burdened with its obscuring weight of snow cover.

It happens to us every year with the gradual warming of winter temperatures and days of lengthening light conditions that signal the upcoming change of seasons.

Even though its only mid February as I write this post already those warming temperatures, lengthening hours of daylight and increasing sunshine have ignited the annual itch within us to return to the Land and once more take part in the vibrant rituals of Spring’s renewal that signal Nature’s return to brilliant and vital life.

The lure of the Land has begun its preparatory work on our senses with this seasonal shift, and there’s no use denying its mesmerizing power or ability to relight the fires of enthusiasm for the land-based activities of Spring which follow along in its wake.

For my wife and I it’s the fish camp we’ve been working on for the past three years that’s exerting its inexorable tug on our heart strings and on our desire to see it brought to completion this year. We’re already at the stage of hardly being able to wait for the snow to begin its annual act of magical disappearance and transformation into spring runoff.

There’s no question those activities are going to involve work that’ll cause the sweat to run freely from our exertions, but at the end of each days labor we know we’ll have the satisfaction of looking on our handiwork and seeing how well the sweat of those labors have been spent.

There are few feelings in the world as fine as those evoked around an evening campfire in a bush camp, watching the lengthening shadows of approaching night begin to wrap their comforting embrace of darkness around you, while sipping a hot cup of sugared tea as a reward for those labors.

Now you know why northern residents are beginning to feel the itch again as Spring approaches, and another circuit of northern living completes its highly anticipated annual revolution through our seasons of life up here.