March is the most hideous month of the year in Wisconsin. When the snow melts, it reveals Winter’s dirty secrets. Everything that Winter had killed, frozen, and buried now reappears; it thaws and rots in the first warmth of spring like a corpse unearthed and set before the sun. The grass on every hillside turns a dull and sickly yellow, the branches reach out as bare as bones, and every footstep is mired in mud. It is all for the sake of a coming resurrection, and soon the fields and forests will live again in splendor. It just takes time. Spring will not be hurried in making its miracles. Meanwhile, even March conceals a trace of beauty for those curious enough to look. As evidence…

I. Snow shrinks before a blue sky near the forest’s edge, where grass will soon be greening:

II. Last year’s apples still hang in their leafless branches, shriveled and rotting. These might not put Snow White to sleep, but they would probably give her a stomachache:

III. Sunlight pierces the woods, undaunted by as-yet leafless tree-limbs, and maple trunks stand like the pillars of an ancient ruin:

IV. Moss grows at the foot of an old stump while melting snow glimmers in the sunlight:

V. Boulders stand by while a stream of meltwater sweeps beneath sheets of thawing ice: