By Joe Crain
When the month of March started here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, it looked like spring was a long way off. There was still 22 inches of snow on the ground and the snow banks along the driveways and roads stood about four feet tall! Temperatures were stubbornly staying well below average, with low 
temperatures dipping into the sub-zero range several times through the first couple weeks of the month. We woke the 12th of March and the mercury was staring back at us with a reading of -20 degrees, and a high that day predicted to only reach 18 degrees! With the first day of calendar spring only eight days away, it was feeling a lot like mid-January here at camp. And then, almost six weeks to the day as that weather prognosticating rodent Punxsutawney Phil had predicted, the weather suddenly switched into hard spring mode. We went from highs in the upper-20s and lower-30s to the mid-40s and low-50s overnight. The snow pack suddenly started to shrink at a rate of 1-2 inches a day (and I know because I had my aluminum yard stick in the snow and checked every morning as I passed by it on my walk to work). Could it truly be happening? Could this odd winter of radical overnight swings from above average temps to below average ones and vice versa just as radically switch to spring warmth? Could this odd winter that brought snow in either tiny drabs or in huge dumps actually melt away without a struggle? Could oversized rodents actually predict the start time of spring? Well, as I sat on March 30th, staring out my office window at snow pounding down at a rate of about an inch and hour on top of the ¼ inch of ice glaze that accumulated overnight, I could see that yard stick that I had been keeping an eye on all month. The yardstick had stopped emerging from the melting snow when it reached the 10-inch mark about six days ago, and was slowly counting inches in the wrong direction. It seems the yardstick had answers to my questions… and the answer was no! No, this odd winter isn’t coming to an end yet, no, we aren’t quite done with the radical temperature swings, no, we aren’t done with the large snow dumps, no, the northland is not going to have a radical switch to spring in the March of 2022, no, rodents can’t forecast when spring will arrive, and no, last month’s article laughing at the audacity of a weather predicting groundhog was not a mistake!
Around the shop we are working on the last of the winter work projects we collected last fall. I have been fixing up several screen doors that were in need of repairs. I’ve been working at camp for such a long time now that almost all of the screen doors around the place are ones I have built. One of the advantages of staying at the same job for so many years is being able to see how well my early designs have lasted through the years, and how well later design modifications worked to solve discovered flaws in earlier generations. This year was especially interesting because several different door design generations came in for repairs at the same time allowing me to do some head-to-head comparison research. And, all things considered, I seem to be making progress! The newest generations of doors are in need much less invasive repair work than the oldest, and the newer doors are surviving the seasonal wear and tear of a camp full of rambunctious young men quite well. The majority of repairs are needed due to environmental degradation, and not so much from youthful exuberance. It’s always rewarding when you look back through time and see that you have indeed been making fruitful decisions and are moving forward.
Hoping to see the end of this odd winter soon and permanently, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.
