On Feb. 8, the coast of Maine was between storms. The Tuesday, Feb. 7 version contained a smorgasbord of sleet, snow and slush. Wednesday, Feb. 8, sun, clouds, sun, gray, sun and so on. Today, Feb. 9, promises to be a humdinger of a snowstorm with inches, I say INCHES, of white stuff, the likes of which we haven't seen this year.

I always forget February is a contrarian. It’s a short month filled with hearts and presidents and it's not January, which makes no never mind about why it exists. January has no identity crisis. It's the backbone of winter, the soul sister of coldness, the undisputed king of blizzard mountain. I sit tight in January, hoping it won't overwhelm the world with storms, and that the long nights won't come as early. Well, the long nights did come again this year. But the storms were puny by most Maine standards, at least here in southern Maine. Northern Maine now hosts all the storms I experienced as a kid, when the banks were as high as the pom pom on my winter hat. 

February breaks my heart every year because it's so bloody unpredictable. True, it is technically part of winter. But I think of it as my rescue month, the one that points toward spring. The truth is, February is a meteorological mess. Warm winds drift tantalizingly up from the south to mix with cold winds coming down from the top of the world, or Canada, whichever comes first. The winds meet in the middle, right over my house in a blinding white out or an ice festival that sits back with a box of popcorn and a soda and watches with glacial glee the aftermath of what it has wrought. For me, February, not April, is the cruelest month.

Having grumbled enough, I admit it has its cherry chocolate heart and candy charms, and what's that cliché? “Life's what you make it.” Or is it, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”? Or maybe, “Well, what do we do now that the Patriots have won the Super Bowl? Watch golf?”

An excellent way to keep the black dog blues at bay in the dead of winter is to bundle up and get outside. Prove to February it's not bothering me one bit. For example, it's good to take a walk, a ski, or a snowshoe in the woods. So, between storms on Wednesday, I did just that. I stopped at Cross River Preserve off Route 27 in Boothbay, fishtailed my Subaru Legacy into the unplowed parking lot, took out the work camera and started hiking through virgin snow into Robert Frost country. You know, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” territory.

A winter story trail read was posted at the trailhead, no doubt put there by Tracey Hall, the environmental educator for the Boothbay Region Land Trust. I went on a story trail adventure with Hall around Halloween and it's such a fun idea. Hall picks a book that jives with the season or holiday, copies it, protects the pages from the elements, and stakes it, page by page, along the trail. Wednesday’s winter story was “Owl Moon” by Jane Yolen. Illustrated by John Schoenherr, the book won the Caldecott Award in 1988. It's a sweet tale about a father who takes his daughter out looking for owls one winter night. The story and the beautiful illustrations kept me company for part of the distance as I broke trail, snapped photos and got showered with the ice and snow dripping from the tree canopy.

To see the raw beauty in a mid-winter landscape requires attention to detail. Brown leaves still clinging to a tree suddenly burst with color against early February's pale pallet. The holes in dead trees indicated that a frugal woodpecker was cashing in on its stores. Little things caught my eye, like tiny spruces and pines buried in heavy white snow, how the green moss and lichens on the surface of a boulder stood out. Looking out at the tidal basin, I marveled at all the shades of gray. One lone dark-eyed junco landed close by and cheeped and it was the cheeriest sound in the world. The many textures, designs and layers of birch bark were stunningly beautiful and intricate.

I looked back at one point to see the crooked trail I left behind me. The imprint of my footsteps encouraged me. They told a tale of progress, of time, and how, no matter how long winter seems, it always gives way. February will end, March will stomp through and spring will come, and the only time important is the time that I am living in. I walked on and eventually crossed my footprints as I finished up the preserve’s almost mile-long loop and returned to the parking lot feeling exhilarated and ready for a cup of hot tea. By the time you read this, it will be storming, or it will have stormed. And that's a whole other story, as told by February.