March, in Which Nothing Quite Goes to Plan
Winter, it seems, is reluctant to leave. Like a houseguest who has overstayed by several weeks and has now begun reorganizing your pantry.
A couple weeks ago it dumped a foot of snow on us—late-season, early March snow. Then, as if to make a point no one asked for, it added another two or three inches. Snow this time of year is briefly pretty and then immediately irritating. It’s not useful snow. You can’t really ski it, or snowmobile it, or do anything particularly joyful with it unless you act quickly and lower your standards. It melts almost as soon as it arrives, leaving behind a soggy, slushy mess that no one ordered.
November snow, now—that’s an investment. March snow is more of a prank.
On the bright side, my three-week snowblower repair saga concluded just in time. The final part arrived mere days before the storm, and my 30-year-old Honda roared back to life like a stubborn but loyal old dog. I was profoundly grateful. Moving a foot of wet, heavy snow by hand would have been… character-building in all the wrong ways.
The weather stalled diving for a bit, but we managed to get out last Thursday. Heather’s fractured foot is improving—she’s been cleared for “short walks,” which I interpret somewhat differently than hauling a hundred pounds of dive gear across icy, rock-strewn terrain. So we opted for Brighton Beach, which is about as gentle and forgiving as Lake Superior gets.
It’s not an exciting site. Mostly sand. A slow slope into 15 or 20 feet of water. The occasional rock, a few lost beach items, and a baffling number of golf balls. But on this day, it had its charms.
The lake was glassy, capped with a thin skim of ice. Walking in, we broke through it like mildly determined icebreakers. It shattered easily, sliding aside without complaint. Nothing thick enough to trap you—just enough to make you feel like you were getting away with something.
Underwater, I practiced back kicks, which remain stubbornly theoretical in my case. I worked through bailout drills too—unclipping, re-clipping, trying to look like someone who knows what they’re doing. These aren’t just busywork. In technical diving, the margin for hesitation is unhelpfully small, and the goal is to make the right response feel automatic. Bailout procedures, in particular, are not something you want to be thoughtfully considering while things are going sideways. They need to happen the way you’d reach for a light switch in the dark—without thinking, just there.
The problem is, those skills fade. Not dramatically, but quietly. A missed step here, a little extra fumble there. Muscle memory, if left unattended, doesn’t disappear so much as it… improvises. So you practice. Not because it’s exciting, but because it’s necessary.
Brighton, with its distinct lack of anything competing for your attention, was perfect. No wrecks to explore, no dramatic structure—just sand, the occasional rock, and those inexplicable golf balls. It’s the kind of place where, if you’re looking for entertainment, you’ll need to bring your own. On this day, that meant drills. A 360 camera hovered nearby, documenting both my best and, more frequently, my worst moments in crisp, unforgiving detail. It’s a humbling thing, seeing yourself attempt to swim backward and instead… gently rearrange the water.
Someday I may figure it out. Or at least fail more efficiently.
Exiting the water was its own form of entertainment. In the shallows, I surfaced repeatedly through the thin ice, popping my head up like a curious seal. There were a couple of people on the beach watching. I’m fairly certain they found us amusing. I’m equally certain they thought we were insane.
Both are probably correct.
We attempted Gooseberry today. It started promising—mild weather, manageable waves, a reasonable forecast. The walk in was longer than usual, since the park doesn’t bother plowing many of the roads in winter, which turns even simple access into a bit of an expedition. At first glance, the lake looked cooperative.
Then it didn’t.
This is what "manageable" looks like right before it stops being manageable.
While gearing up, I managed—again—to roll my rebreather out of the back of my SUV. This has, unbelievably, happened before. The unit weighs nearly 90 pounds—dense, solid, and reassuringly overbuilt when it’s sitting still. But once it starts moving, all that mass becomes something else entirely—decisive.
It’s a bit front-heavy, with a natural tendency to tip forward, which makes placing it near the edge of a vehicle a decision that relies heavily on optimism. I’ve developed a habit—an apparently inconsistent one—of turning it slightly sideways before setting it down, just to stack the odds in my favor. Today, I forgot. Just briefly. Long enough to reach for something else.
That was all it needed. It had been waiting for an opportunity.
It toppled forward and crashed onto the pavement upside down—oxygen and diluent cylinders striking asphalt with a sickening, hollow crack. The kind of sound that travels directly to your stomach and settles there.
I froze. It felt less like picking up equipment and more like approaching a fallen patient. There was a moment where I genuinely wondered if I should be checking it for fractures. I stood there, staring at it, with that slow, sinking feeling that something important—and expensive—had just gone very wrong.
A quick inspection revealed no obvious damage, aside from my dignity. It passed its checks, somehow, which was both a relief and mildly insulting. I stood there looking at it, with the uneasy awareness that this entire sequence of events felt familiar in a way it absolutely shouldn’t.
By the time we reached the water, the wind had picked up and shifted north. The lake had grown noticeably less friendly—breaking waves, surface slush being tossed around in the surge, the whole entry point turning from manageable to questionable in a hurry. Add in Heather’s still-healing foot, and we were left with that familiar, unwelcome question: do we call the dive?
Thirty minutes. That's how long manageable lasted.
“I really don’t want to call it,” Heather said.
Which, in diver language, means we absolutely should.
So we did.
It’s never an easy decision, especially after all the effort—packing, assembling, and hauling a small mountain of gear. Winter diving adds sleds to the equation, so now you’re dragging bailout bottles, fins, and camera gear through the woods like a slightly disorganized Arctic expedition. It’s a lot to turn around from. But the wind was steadily finding its footing, and the waves were lining up behind it with clear intent. The idea of negotiating two- to three-foot surf on a healing foot fracture began to feel less like optimism and more like a short story with an unfortunate ending. So, in a rare but commendable display of good judgment, we packed it in and headed back.
At home, still annoyed with myself (and my apparent resistance to learning), I decided to intervene. I built a small wooden ramp for the back of the SUV—just a couple inches high, tucked under the rear carpet, but enough to create a definite inward slope. Now, when I set the rebreather down, it leans safely into the vehicle instead of toward the pavement.
The result of dropping a $10,000 rebreather on pavement twice. Plywood, carpet, and hard-won wisdom.
It’s a surprising amount of work devoted to preventing me from doing something stupid.
But here we are.
In better news, Grace is home for spring break. She made dinner last night—pasta, and her salted chocolate chip cookies, which are, without exaggeration, among my favorite things on Earth. We piled into the theater room with Gus and Oz and watched Ford vs. Ferrari, which I’ve now seen enough times to quote inappropriately.
Shari was in Minneapolis for work, but otherwise it was about as perfect an evening as you can manage in mid-March, with winter still lingering just outside.
Isabel will be home this weekend too. The house full again—everyone in one place, noise in the kitchen, dogs weaving through it all. It doesn’t happen as often now, which makes it feel like an occasion when it does.
Plenty to look forward to, regardless of what the weather decides to do next.