A co-worker once said to me after I had announced my first robin sighting of the spring that there would only be three more snow events to go. Puzzled, I inquired further, and she explained it was a saying her mother used to make after she saw her first robin of the season, and typically according to her records, it was spot on. After this weekend’s storm, and a little squall last week following this season’s first sighting of the red-breasted bird a couple weeks back, there’s only one to go by that adage. I guess there’s nothing like cramming them all together to get them out of the way, but I can’t figure out why the robins still sound so cheery in the morning after I’ve shoveled and plowed the drifts from my driveway. Maybe they know something I don’t.

The outdoors is full of myths and sayings whose origins are lost to time and the hundreds of seasons that have passed since the first settlers made their way west from the coast, likely many more persist with the first peoples who occupied these areas long before my ancestors arrived. I have my favorites among them and have more than once detailed them in this column and other writings, and with each year I learn new ones by talking with older anglers and hunters and delving into old writings about the early days of hunting, fishing, farming and the almanacs that hoped to predict next year’s success based on previous experiences and the signs that are made manifest by nature each season.

One of the earliest I can recall was walking into the yellow brick building of Northwestern Industries, a local hunting supply store owned by a friend’s father on the north side of Main Street in my hometown which overlooked a favorite bend in the Sheyenne River. As my dad picked up some camo and shotgun shells, I recall the bunches of ladybugs piled up in the corners of the store’s large front window, crawling all over each other in an attempt to get in. Leon, the owner, smiled at me as I watched the horde of orange-and-black and said, “it’s gonna be a tough winter,” before explaining to me that in those autumns where an abundance of ladybugs appear, and ultimately end up trapped between storm windows and main windows making a vacuum-worthy mess of things, snow is likely to come early, and temperatures will be below normal in the coming months, before he further advised that it was best to get any hunting in early.

Too young to even ask why, the statement has stuck with me, and more or less played out as Leon said it would from season to season. Just like the length of the midsection of a woolly bear caterpillar, or the “wind from the north, don’t venture forth” fishing saying, or the appearance of any other supposed predictor species from Punxsutawney Phil in February, to battalions of army worms in June to swarms of grasshoppers in late August, the confirmation bias adds up. Keeping an eye to the sky, or a watch for rising insects from the water, or observations on the blooming of lilacs, or an ear cocked for the sound of an oriole passing through, can give an idea as to what’s happening, and perhaps after enough seasons of looking and listening, a prophecy of sorts as to what’s coming in both the near and long term, and how strong a harsh season might be, or how long the more pleasant ones will last. For any of those efforts, whether looking to confirm the accuracy of those old wives’ tales, or just singling out when the walleyes might be running in the spring or where the ducks and geese might land to feed on that perfect fall day requires observation, an effort that grows increasingly difficult as we’re distracted by screens, wrapped up by the increasing pace of life, and embroiled in the bitterness of election years that seem four times longer than they used to be.

Take the time this season to find those favorite sayings. Buck the north wind and sally forth on the bow of your boat to see if you can best the warning adage. Make notes of the caterpillars, crows and other critters that have some mythical predictive abilities attached to them. Or simply jot down what you see from time to time in addition to the rain, snow, heat, and storms you experience along with your limits of crappies, braces of mallards, tags on deer, or those hunts where you come home with nothing but tightness in your hips and hamstrings. In time, you’ll find a pattern of your own, and be able to make prognostications from what you’ve learned after a few seasons … in our outdoors.