I was hours late getting home, but the night was perfectly indigo blue scattered with thousands of frozen white stars, and a moon that seemed too big for the sky, so I didn’t mind too much.
I paused a minute or two longer at the gate than usual, just admiring the night and ignoring ever so briefly the heartaches and hardwon victories of the day and the week. The Moon of Fat Worms was reluctantly sharing the nighttime glory with Venus and Jupiter, and which meant Mars was lurking somewhere nearby.
A quarter-mile off to the sou’west, I heard a coyote serenading the same moon, or else bemoaning the fact that he was a little late in the season to be concerned with his bachelorhood, since all the respectable song-dogs had paired up for the spring. I resisted the urge to bark back at him, as I often do, but somewhere not too far off, a real dog took up my slack and asked the coyote to explain exactly what made him think he had the right to be around here, much less be disturbing the peace. A thousand yards away, my own hounds heard the challenge, and added their own three-part harmony to the night.
It was a restless night, but March always makes me restless. Not restless in the same way as the beaver and the fat worms that give the month its name, of course. Nor even like the sleepy turtles who dare to stick their heads of out the mud and make an investment in a handy floating treelimb.
The Moon of Fat Worms draws a plethora of fishing bait from the ground to find mates and make more little worms. You’ll find their holes scattered across the lawn in the morning, since such bacchanalia takes place long after civilized humans are in bed, but sometimes they’ll climb stone steps and walkways as well. I have never known why some prefer to writhe on the hard cold surface from whence there is no escape, rather than the dirt that gives them safety, but I don’t even understand the mating habits of humans, much less mollusks. Thankfully I am years beyond anything but a mild academic interest in such.
March is the Month of Mud – indeed, my Celtic ancestors referred to it as such – and perhaps that’s why the worms come out to play. Whatever causes their rudimentary synapses to head for the surface, I guess there’s something of it in all God’s creatures.
When the Moon of Fat Worms brightens the night landscape, I get restless. It’s not my typical borderline lycanthropy, since a full moon in the dead of winter or the heat of summer can just as easily cause restlessness. Since it’s harder for me to wander the woods at night these days, my full moon madness seems to be even worse sometimes, but the Moon of the Fat Worms has an extra something, an extra urgency, a certain edge and anticipation.
Maybe it’s because baseball is about to fire up for real; even though I haven’t been to any kind of a game in years, and I don’t care about games on television, March was when we began practicing in earnest. I can cheer as vigorously for either side in a youth or high school game, since my loyalties are to the sport and seeing young men exemplifying America, rather than a particular team or town. Were we not living in such sad times, I would happily find a random ballpark and enjoy a few innings, but unaccompanied middle aged men without players in the game are automatically suspect in such places (and rightfully so).
When my parents realized I was less likely to kill myself or hurt anyone else, March was often when we hit the woods in earnest. March was when we kids could camp by ourselves for the first time. The nights were often chill, but not always bitterly cold, and no one cared about a bunch of kids camping beside a river with a big campfire back then.
Many was the time we gathered those aforementioned fat worms with the aid of a coffee can and flashlight, since the third month meant fish were also awakening from a long winter-semi-nap and were hungry. I have always liked fishing in March since the first forward scouts of the mosquito invasion can be swatted away, as opposed to being deterred with the clouds of bug spray that will be required within days of the first warm rain.
March is the time of Grass Greening, as another culture described it, when the livestock could begin to replace some of the weight shivered off through the winter. My own animals bear witness to the same practice. Although a king’s ransom worth of hay and feed kept them warm through a mild winter this time around, March is when my pitiful pastures turn green enough to overwhelm St. Patrick. The horses appear to have their noses welded to the warming earth while the goats set about methodically stripping and suckering the young trees as effectively as any farmworker in a tobacco field.
March is a time to rest, between the end of most hunting seasons and land trapping, and the time when the turkeys will deafen the hollows with explosive challenging gobbles, and trappers have one last campaign against the beavers of spring.
March is when we begin to look toward Resurrection Day and all it represents, even though the holiday isn’t until April and too many folks are hung up on candy pookas and spring beach trips to remember the real meaning of that glorious day.
March is when the rabbits dance and the first of the year’s baby squirrels learn to climb and our resident songbirds nest and the chameleon anoles rest on the fence in the sun. March is a time for reawakening after the last bitter throes of winter have been forgotten with February, and a cold morning is more of a nuisance than a lifestyle.
The Moon of Fat Worms was looking down on all that and more the other night, as I wasted an extra moment or two at the gate. My mind and heart were heavy with work, family, and the usual bothers of everyday life – but for just that few minutes, I could see the green promise that is March, the Month of Fat Worms.
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