Out Home

North Again

North Again EARLY MARCH ON THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES is just another name for winter. Oh, there's been some loose talk about spring coming, but not much to back it up. Cabin fever is rising. Vast numbers of small boys are getting whacked. Folks are edgy, and neighbors coming home from Mexican holidays are well advised to lie low and keep quiet until their suntans fade. But now, for our old friends in Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, and Portage la Prairie, we're happy to verify that rumor of spring. Due south of you, the Cheyenne Bottoms of central Kansas are newly alive with ducks and geese. They're bringing spring up from the Gulf Coast and will be with you directly. Hang in there. The Grand Passage is under way. Spring is being delivered by our most dependable airline. An excited, restless throng is coming up through the heart of North America-up from the wintering marshes and estuaries, from the Sabine and Aransas and Laguna Madre. Their impa159 North Again ulLy WAlCK ON TKO CANADIAN Pu.,.,OS i. just ~nother n~me for winter. Oh, there's been some loose talk about spring corning, but not much to b~ck it up. C~bin fever is rising. Vast numbt~ of small boy. are getting wh...,ked, Folks are edgy, ~nd neighbor. roming home from Me~iun holld~ys ~re well advised to lie low and keep quiet until their sunl~ns fade. But now, for Our old friend. in Saskatoon, Moose law, and Portage la Prairie, we're happy to verify that rumOr of spring. Due south of you, the Cheyenne Bottoms of central Kan~. are newly alive with ducks and geese. They're bringing spring up from the Gulf CNst and will be with you directly. Hang in the..... The Grand Pas~ge is under way. Spring i. being delivered by our most dependable airline. An excited, r....tleu throng is coming up through the heart of North America-up from the wintering marshes and estuaries, from the Sabine and Arama. and l.a&una M.dre. Their impa- '" North Again ulLy WAlCK ON TKO CANADIAN Pu.,.,OS i. just ~nother n~me for winter. Oh, there's been some loose talk about spring corning, but not much to b~ck it up. C~bin fever is rising. Vast numbt~ of small boy. are getting wh...,ked, Folks are edgy, ~nd neighbor. roming home from Me~iun holld~ys ~re well advised to lie low and keep quiet until their sunl~ns fade. But now, for Our old friend. in Saskatoon, Moose law, and Portage la Prairie, we're happy to verify that rumOr of spring. Due south of you, the Cheyenne Bottoms of central Kan~. are newly alive with ducks and geese. They're bringing spring up from the Gulf CNst and will be with you directly. Hang in the..... The Grand Pas~ge is under way. Spring i. being delivered by our most dependable airline. An excited, r....tleu throng is coming up through the heart of North America-up from the wintering marshes and estuaries, from the Sabine and Arama. and l.a&una M.dre. Their impa- '" 160 JOHN MADSON tience builds with each passing day, the hosts of wildfowl crowding behind the frost barrier of the 32-degree isotherm and pushing it steadily northward. Most of them are being drawn to a vast arc of open land that sprawls through southeastern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, and southwestern Manitoba, down into those parts of the Dakotas and Montana that lie east and north of the Missouri River. This is the prairie pothole region-the fabled Duck Factory300 ,000 square miles of the richest duck-producing range in the New World. It's a young landscape, no older than the retreat of the last lobes of the Wisconsin glaciation perhaps 10,000 years ago. Sheets, ridges, hills, and mounds of ground-up, heaved-up glacial junk were strewn over thousands of square miles-a rumpled landscape with a remarkable faculty for retaining surface waters. Lakes and ponds were dammed by countless glacial moraines; others were trapped in the oxbows of Pleistocene rivers. Some resulted from ice lenses-the soil-covered chunks of ice left buried in the debris after the glacial retreat, later melting to leave water-filled depressions. It is a baby land, raw and new, still too young to have developed mature drainage systems. That will come, of course, when stream courses and river valleys deepen. The lakes and ponds...