March is kind of a good month for me. It's usually too cold and wet to do much in the way of outdoor chores and the women don't want me in the house underfoot. So I spend a considerable time just hanging around.

It so happens that right now I'm lucky enough to be able to hang around a couple of black Labrador puppies who like to take me for long, rambunctious walks. Black cyclones at my feet, I am steered unerringly and with very few diversionary skirmishes, toward the brook.

If there is a place in heaven for Labrador retrievers (and I trust there is or I won't go) it'll have to have a brook right smack in the middle--a brook with little thin shoals for wading and splashing; a brook with deep, still pools where they can throw themselves headlong from the bank; a brook with lots of small sticks floating that can be retrieved back to shore where they belong; a brook with minnows to play with; a brook with muskrats and muskrat holes; a brook with green herons and wood ducks; a brook that is never twice the same with surprises that run and swim and fly; a brook that is cold enough to make the man with the dog run like the devil away from his shaking; a brook with a fine spot to get muddy and a sunny spot or two to get dry.

At the end of the walk the puppies shrink into sleep like so many run-down toys. And I stand a minute or two and watch them. One lies on his back with his feet in the air like a bed turned upside down; the other two lie in more conventional attitudes. I feel a little younger just watching them, hoping they'll stay just like this a little longer, but I know how anxious they are to grow big enough to be unclumsy with their funny, outsized feet.

The old dog comes out now and stands watching with me, hurt that she wasn't invited along even though she's too old to stand the kind of roughhouse that the puppies put her through. She looks up at me, her eyes saying "please," and off we go the way we used to go together--except that a decade of time and all its little hurts have come to stay. I like to think that my old Tippy has her dreams of when she was young and strong with legs like Osage orange hunting bows. I'm more than sure she really knows we're getting old and just in kindness pretends to me we're not. She'll lug along a stick and once or twice she'll nudge it in my hand for me to throw--an old lady window shopping carrying her purse along in case she wants to give herself some little treat.

Where did our 10 years go, my graying friend, my love? How unfairly fast the time has come when your body can't obey your great, great heart. No matter Tip, we were young together and knew what life was all about. Let's turn back now and build a fire and take a little nap.

A man can do some serious thinking while he's just hanging around, staying out from underfoot. I've got a lot of things that I've saved up for my midwinter spending. I know there'll come a span in life when all times seem like March. I'll lack the warmth inside me, then, to do much in the way of chores and no one will want me underfoot. But I'll always have some spots where I still like to hang around. There's a duckblind on the Eastern Shore where I once saw the canvasbacks tumble in the blocks so thick from a snow squall whistling on their heels. I couldn't shoot for fear of taking three or four with just one shot. Or I can hang around a little setter dog named Ben and chase a flight of woodcock through an ancient orchard sweet with the smell of northern spies and red fall pippins. I can walk along the ponds I used to trap when my grandpa bought my possums from me for a dime. I can find my dad and we'll just get old Red and hunt us up some coon when the misty night becomes moon-washed and soft.

I'll always have the beagles, the pointers, the redbone and bluetick hounds, the Labs, the setters, and all the men that went with them. I'll have just the weather that I want--when I want it. I've got Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi River. I've got the high Sierras and the Jersey swamps. I can break my first 25 again at trap with my old Model 12 and hang around the gun club for a while acting nonchalant about it.

Some of the best hanging around I do is in front of a fire. A fire gives a man something to care about. It's company. It keeps him busy. He can make it roar or gentle him. A good fire has it all: the smell of whiskey and apples and wet dogs; the colors of dawns he's loved and sunsets he's regretted. It's the best place to clean guns and make plans and remember stories.

Right now give me a good fire, some puppies to play with, and an old dreamy dog who likes to have her belly rubbed. March will be soon gone, pulling spring along behind, while we've just been hanging around.